


For the Holidays, You Can't Beat Home Sweet Home

by GoldenWaffles



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Bad First Impressions, Christmas, F/F, Family, Fluff, Hallmark Christmas AU, Holidays, Home Repair, Inspired by Hallmark Christmas Movies, Nicole Haught Chops Wood, Nicole is Good With Her Hands, Pathologically Helpful Nicole, Shameless Use of Christmas Music, She'll Swing an Axe, Stubborn Waverly, Yeah I know what the people want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27850338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenWaffles/pseuds/GoldenWaffles
Summary: Waverly left Purgatory years ago, eager to leave behind all its bad memories, and she never looked back. Now, years later, she gets word that her childhood home, the Earp Homestead, is about to be condemned and demolished by the city authorities, taking its few good memories with it. So for the first time in years, she goes home for the holidays.But in the process of saving her home, she might just remember everything she left behind, and everything new that could be waiting for her...
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 251
Kudos: 497





	1. I'll Be Home For Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there, everyone! A few months ago, I got this overpowering urge to write a Christmas fic, and this is the result. I got a jump on it, but it's still a bit in progress. It was meant to be a super fluffy Hallmark-style one, but has a little bittersweetness as well, because apparently I can't help myself. Waverly's had some drama in her life, after all, but luckily she's about to get a bit of a break via a certain handy redhead.
> 
> I'm posting the first chapter as a little taster, and more will appear as we creep closer to Christmas. It kicks off with just a hint of enemies-to-lovers, but that script flips soon, don't you worry. Let me know what you think!

“I really wish you’d come up this year,” Gus’s voice echoed from the phone as Waverly climbed the stairs to her apartment. Her sandals— comfortable in the balmy Arizona winter, though they would have been suicidal in Purgatory— clicked on each step as she ascended.

“Is Wynonna invited?” She countered tiredly, already feeling a headache building. It had been a long day already, and she was tired of having this conversation every time a holiday came around. Gus didn’t respond immediately, which was answer enough. Waverly sighed. “I’ve told you, it’s hard for me to get up there, and I don’t like to take the time off work.”

“They give you holidays off at that tourist trap, don’t they?” Gus had many virtues, but subtlety wasn’t one of them. Waverly could hear the distaste in her voice in the words _tourist trap_. Ever since Waverly had packed up her online degrees and encyclopedic knowledge of the Old West and taken a job as a historical consultant in Tombstone, Gus had apparently discovered a new lifelong disdain for the place.

“Yes, but Tombstone gets a lot of visitors in January and February, so we have to get ready for that. Besides, I’ve told you before, don’t want to make the trip unless Wynonna gets the same offer. And I’ll _know_ if she does. She’ll tell me.”

Wynonna was her favorite person in the entire world— warm, funny, full of snarky confidence and badassery— but the people in their hometown didn’t feel the same way. She had been _persona non grata_ there practically since she was a pre-teen, for reasons both tragic and stupid. Tragic, like the fact that as a child, she had shot their father in the chaos of a home invasion. Stupid, like that fact that she liked to stay out all night and flip the bird at authority figures.

And to Waverly’s eternal distress, that applied to their aunt and uncle as well. One stint in juvie on a trumped-up drug charge, and they booted her out of the house and into a series of terrible foster homes. Waverly had never fully forgiven them for that.

“Isn’t she still in Italy?” Gus sounded like she was nosing around for a loophole. As always.

“Greece. But maybe if she thought she would be _welcome_ back home, she would come back.” Waverly began digging through her purse as she reached her floor, fingers scrabbling around for her key.

“Angel, wild horses couldn’t drag that girl back to Purgatory, and even if she were welcome in our house, this town has a memory like an elephant. She wouldn’t have a moment’s peace here. You know that.”

“That’s not her fault.” There was the key. She always forgot she put it in the side pocket.

“Whether or not it’s anybody’s fault, it’s the truth.”

“Gus…” Waverly sighed, reluctantly gearing up for yet another defense of her only sister, but Gus cut her off with just about the last words she had expected.

“I know it’s a nuisance to get up here, ever since you up and moved yourself halfway across the continent, but this may be your last year to say goodbye to that beat-up old house your daddy owned.”

Waverly paused by the door to her apartment, the key halfway to the lock.

“What do you mean, say goodbye?” she asked, her stomach unexpectedly going cold.

“The talk around town is, that old shack just got condemned.”

_Condemned?_

Waverly pictured the Homestead in her head. The house. The barn. The wood stove. The porch swing. Sure, it was old. Sure, it needed some repairs. But _condemned_?

The Homestead was fixed so securely in her memory, such an immutable fact of life. It had been there since the days of Wyatt Earp himself, and there was no reason for that to change. Even if she hadn’t seen it in years, it was always there. Always waiting.

She shook her head, like it was that easy to dismiss the rumor.

“But… they can’t do that. We own that land outright,” she argued, trying to project more certainty than she really felt.

“It’s been abandoned for years now. The whole thing’s just waiting for a good strong breeze to knock it down,” Gus disagreed.

“But…” Waverly’s mind was racing. That house was built out of stubborn wood and bad memories, but it was _her_ house, goddamnit, hers and Wynonna’s. They were the only two left, the last of Wyatt Earp’s line, and it was their birthright, their inheritance. Together. It was the last house where they had really all been a family, broken as it was. And more to the point, if Wynonna _did_ ever return to Purgatory, it was the only place in the whole Ghost River Triangle where she would be welcomed. They _couldn’t_ tear it down. “Look, I promise I’ll think about it and call you back, okay?”

* * *

And that was how Waverly Gibson found herself raiding her wardrobe for anything resembling winterwear and booking a far-too-expensive last-minute flight up to Alberta.

Her plan was simple. She would tell the town government that the Homestead was in fact _not_ abandoned, and that it was, in fact, of _great_ historical importance, and that they did not _need_ to tear it down. She would arrange for whatever minor repairs it needed, she would enjoy the holiday with her family, and she then she would fly home.

Shockingly, Arizona to Alberta wasn’t the most popular route in the world, and so her journey to Purgatory involved too many hours in too-crowded airports for her liking, not to mention the flights themselves (flying had always left her anxious and airsick).

All said and done, by the time she was turning the key in the ignition of her rental car for the final leg of the journey, she was on the verge of just laying her face on the steering wheel and falling asleep, even though it was still the middle of the day. Her eyes itched with tiredness, and even with the car’s heater blasting, she could feel the Canadian wind trying to sneak its icy fingers through the glass of the windows, raising goosebumps on her arms.

“Haven’t missed these winters…” she sighed to herself, pulling the coat’s collar higher up her neck and turning the volume up on the radio.

* * *

The drive from the Big City to Purgatory was achingly familiar, even in the strange car. She flipped the radio between her favorite stations and made her way down streets she had driven a hundred times before. This close to the holiday, it was all Christmas music all the time, but Waverly didn’t mind. With the sunlight glinting off all the snow, and ribbons and garlands wrapped around every streetlight, Christmas music seemed like just another part of the scenery, and she sang quietly along, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.

She recognized landmarks at every turn, but at the same time felt shocked and almost betrayed by how many new buildings and businesses had cropped up in her absence. While she had been building her career in Arizona, time had somehow kept passing here, too. It felt strange. It seemed like everything should still be frozen in place from when she left, trapped and kept fresh in the ice of the long winters.

In spite of the familiarity and the cheerful Christmas tunes, her nerves started to get the best of her as she exited the highway, minutes away from her hometown. It had been years since she’d been back, and she couldn’t pin down how she felt about it. Everything seemed to churn together in her chest— anxiety and dread mixing with anger and frustration, and all of them undermined by a traitorous sense of nostalgia. And maybe, if she were willing to admit it to herself, maybe even the slightest touch of homesickness.

This was _her town_ , after all. She knew every dip and curve of this road, and every farm and business she passed. Names rattled themselves off in her head without permission— Gardner, York, Dixen, McBlake, Brewer. All that knowledge, useless to her life now, bubbling back to the surface like she had never even left.

Purgatory was _her town_ , even if she had moved away, and the Homestead was _her house_ , even if it had been vacant for years, and the town government had a lot of _nerve_ to try to take it from her like this.

So maybe the house was a little run down, or it hadn’t necessarily been built to modern codes— it had been built by _Wyatt Earp’s_ own two gunslinging hands, and passed down through the bloodline. What did they expect? With everything that land had seen, did they _really_ expect her to just lie down in Arizona and let them _take_ it from her?

There was an aching image in her head, of her and Wynonna sitting around the firepit outside the Homestead, laughing and talking late into the night. Of sharing drinks around the old kitchen table. Of putting that Christmas tree back up, with her ridiculous handmade angel on top. It was an image that screamed _home_ , and one that would _never_ have a chance to happen if the Homestead got snatched away from them both.

Her breathing grew harder and faster, fogging the inside of the windows as she pulled into the town proper and steered the car onto Main Street. She had planned to go to her aunt and uncle’s house first, but why wait? She was full of righteous fury and was more than ready to unleash it on the first so-called civil servant who dared to challenge her.

Time to get her house back.

* * *

Waverly had never had a bucket of ice water upended over her head, but she was pretty sure it must feel something like stepping out of a warm car into a Purgatory December. Her years in the American Southwest had softened her to the bite of cold— _real_ cold— and her teeth clenched against the urge to chatter. She shivered under her inadequate coat, her breath steaming in the air as she grumbled ‘frick’ and ‘fudge’ and ‘gosh-doink-it.’

She let the burn of the cold fuel her as she marched into the building and turned on her heel into the police station.

Waverly’s memories of the Purgatory PD were mixed, much like most of her memories of Purgatory. Sometimes, the sight of their uniforms just reminded her of her father, former sheriff Ward Earp. He had been a hard man, who had abused his wife physically and his three daughters emotionally, and who had seemed to have a particular dislike for his youngest, Waverly herself. Sometimes, rarely, she still woke, startled, from dreams of his shouting, slurred voice. Those dreams left her shaken for hours and often had her calling Wynonna just to hear her voice.

Luckily, some of those memories had been overwritten by later ones— of Curtis, who had replaced Ward as her father, and of Randy Nedley, who had replaced him as sheriff. Nedley was Ward’s opposite, a doting father and a kind man, and his daughter had been Waverly’s best friend for most of her life. Standing in front of the municipal building now, she tried to let the good memories bolster her.

The Homestead was part of the bones of the town, and so was she. They would have to listen to her. They would have to understand.

Usually she would approach these kinds of confrontations with honeyed words and homemade cookies, but today she was jet-lagged and shivering and ready to _fight_.

She burst through the doors and confronted the first person she saw at the desk.

“I need to talk to someone about a condemned property,” she said to the slightly dopey-looking man in a deputy’s uniform. He seemed to involuntarily lean away from her as his sluggish brain registered her anger.

“Um…” he stammered, eyes darting up and down the counter, as though in search of some paperwork that could save him. “Uh…”

“I’ve got it, Lonnie,” came a tired voice from across the room. Another deputy, this one female, stood at a desk, a coat and backpack in hand as though she were just on her way out the door. She set both back on the desk and walked up to the counter. She was tall, with bright red hair pulled back in a no-nonsense French braid, and Waverly didn’t recognize her at all. Picking up a notepad and pen, she addressed Waverly. “Is the property yours?”

“Yes.” Waverly crossed her arms and tried to stand as tall as she could, but unless the lady cop sat down, it was no use. The woman was clearly a head taller than her.

“Name?” she prompted.

“Waverly Gibson.” The words came automatically, and she was so used to saying them that it wasn’t until the officer had typed it into the computer and shaken her head that Waverly realized her mistake.

“There’s no—”

“ **EARP**!” Waverly rushed to correct herself, accidentally shouting the word in her haste. The cursed name echoed in the otherwise quiet station. “Um… Sorry… Waverly Earp.”

The woman— her name tag read “Haught”— seemed to stare her down from across the counter.

“Earp. Okay. Right, the Earp property.” She seemed to recognize the name now. “That building has been vacant for _years_ , with no apparent maintenance and no one using it for any purpose. It’s considered unsafe for habitation, and we’ve had reports that it may even have been used as a hangout by local gangs.”

“Local _gangs_? Purgatory has _gangs_? We barely even have a gas station!” Waverly said incredulously. She had never heard such a ludicrous statement in all her life. The deputy seemed unfazed, continuing on in a toneless voice that bordered on patronizing.

“Drug trafficking is a common problem this close to the border, and sometimes criminals trying to avoid heat in the city will move to the rural areas instead. Abandoned buildings outside of town are prime real estate for anything from meth labs to warehouses for stolen goods.”

“If criminals are using _my_ family’s house as a meth lab, isn’t that _your_ concern as the police? Shouldn’t you _stop_ them from doing that instead of, you know, _demolishing a historical landmark_?!”

Deputy Haught didn’t flinch at her tone and didn’t back down, which was very annoying of her. On the contrary, her features hardened at Waverly’s tone.

“Miss Gibson, or Earp, or whoever you are, I’ve seen that property, and it doesn’t look much like a ‘historical landmark’ to me. If it is one, it’s obviously never been treated like it. Have you ever tried to get it registered as a historic site?”

It was actually a reasonable question, and for a second, Waverly paused, wondering why they _hadn’t_ ever done such a thing.

“Well, no… We _lived_ there.”

“We tried to reach out to the property owner— namely, _Wynonna_ Earp, but we weren’t able to get in contact with her.”

“She’s out of the country. Whatever addresses or phone numbers you have are probably out of date.”

Haught shrugged, as if it didn’t actually matter.

“Well, she clearly didn’t make any arrangements for the house before leaving the country, so it’s still an abandoned and neglected property.”

“It can’t be _that_ bad. It’s been standing since nineteen twenty-five, I don’t think it’s falling down anytime soon!” Waverly erupted. The deputy gave her a tired look, like she was dealing with a spoiled child.

“That’s not how architecture works,” she deadpanned.

Waverly had never wanted to strangle anyone before, but she was about to make an exception.

“Well you can’t just… tear down my family home, just because it’s old!” For the first time in the altercation, Waverly’s voice was more upset than angry, and through the blur of sudden tears, she saw something in the deputy’s face soften. She took a deep breath and brushed a stray wisp of red hair back into place, apparently taking a few seconds to think or to calm down.

“Listen, if you want to save the house, then it’s your family’s responsibility to bring it up to code and make it safe. If you can fix it up enough that an inspector says it’s not dangerous, this can all get called off. But you need to at least put in a good faith effort. Do you understand?” Her voice had softened to, if still not a _friendly_ tone, at least a more neutral one.

“Fine. I’ll take care of it.” It sounded like a hassle, and expensive, but if that was what it took, then Waverly would do it. “Thanks for all your _help_.” Her voice was acidic as she turned and swept out of the police station, back into the freezing December day, leaving a tired-looking Officer Haught behind.

* * *

By the time Waverly made it to her aunt and uncle’s house, the heat of her anger had been cooled by the frigid air, and she felt rude and childish. She could have approached the situation a _lot_ more diplomatically. But she was cold and jet-lagged and more than ready to see her aunt and uncle again.

She’d been away for so long.

She was already sniffling from emotion (and maybe a little from the cold) as she pulled onto their street. Whatever issues she had with her aunt and uncle and their “handling” of Wynonna, she still loved them, and it had been gutting to go this long without seeing them, in a way that she hadn’t fully appreciated until she was parking in front of their house. Her pulse raced with excitement and homesickness.

The house looked exactly the way she remembered it, blanketed in snow and decked out with twinkling strings of lights. A huge evergreen wreath hung on the door, which swung open before she had even had time to knock, and she was swept into a bear hug by her uncle. And just like that, all the stress and drama of the day seemed to fall away.

She had missed him. She had missed this. The tightness of his embrace and the familiar smell of his shirt dashed any hopes she had had about appearing stoic and mature and worldly, and she was instead reduced to a little girl with a scraped knee, crying into his flannel shirt.

“You’ve been missed, kiddo,” Curtis said into her hair as she squeezed him with all her strength.

 _God_ , how had she stayed away for so long? Had it really been worth it?

“Alright, wrap it up, you two, you’re letting all the cold air in,” came Gus’s voice, gruff but affectionate, from further inside the house. Curtis set her back on the ground and let her rub her eyes dry.

“We best listen to her,” he said, eyes twinkling. “She’s the boss, after all.”

He ushered her into the warm house, where Gus pulled her into a briefer (though no less heartfelt) hug, then held her back by the shoulders to look her over.

“You’re too skinny. And that doesn’t look like a very warm coat. Don’t they have winters in Arizona?”

“Not like here,” Waverly sighed, shrugging out of it to hang in the closet. Back in Tombstone, it was probably sixty degrees and sunny. She missed the warmth, but she did have to admit that there was something fitting about the way Christmas decorations looked on a cold, snowy day.

“Bet you miss it in summer, though,” Curtis challenged her. She shrugged, and mumbled something generic about ‘a dry heat.’

“I just went to the municipal building to talk to them about un-condemning the Homestead,” she said, bringing the subject back to her visit. “And some… _ginger_ _Amazon_ told me they’re going to tear it down unless we— _I_ — get it fixed up!”

“That must have been their newest deputy, Officer Haught,” Curtis said, looking interested.

“Yeah, that was her name.”

“Only met her once so far, just in passing. She seemed nice enough. But the sheriff talks about her like they won the dang lottery.”

“Well if you ask me, she needs to work on the ‘serve’ part of ‘protect and serve.’” Waverly could feel her irritation coming back, the indignation of having to beg them to not tear down her family’s property. But Uncle Curtis clapped an arm around her shoulders and started steering her towards the kitchen.

“Come on, kiddo, you must be exhausted from your trip. Why don’t you come sit down, and I’ll get your suitcase out of the car.”

“I can get it,” she protested halfheartedly. It was warm inside, and she nearly shivered at the thought of going back out into the snow. He pressed her into a chair at the kitchen table, patting her shoulder.

“You already took your coat off and everything, let me take care of it.” The tiny gesture was enough to put a lump in her throat, but she smiled at him and handed over the car key with a quiet thanks.

It was surreal to be back. Surreal to see snow on the ground and to sit in her aunt’s kitchen while her uncle whistled out-of-tune Christmas carols on his way out the door.

“So how’s the OK Corral?” Gus asked, in a tone that couldn’t _quite_ pass for neutral.

“It’s good. I like it there.”

Gus made an unconvinced “hmph” sort of noise.

“Well, as long as it’s what makes you happy.”

“It makes me _financially independent_ and _respected in my field_ ,” Waverly clarified. Gus eyed her over her shoulder while she stirred something on the stovetop.

“That ain’t the same thing.”

Waverly almost argued back, that she was _fine_ , and it was _close enough_. She had a good job and a nice apartment and eventually she would get the rest sorted out— friends, dates, that elusive feeling of _home_. All those things just took time, that was all.

But before she could piece together an argument, Uncle Curtis was back, now joyfully singing along with the radio, bellowing _Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow_ , making any further conversation impossible. Gus shook her head affectionately at his antics and threw a dishtowel at him.

“Shut it, you lunk, you’re gonna set the neighbor’s dogs howling.”

Curtis grinned rakishly and threw his head back, howling at the ceiling and then laughing at his own joke.

Waverly felt her heart swell. She had missed them so much.

And, she realized, watching them together, she _envied_ them, too. She had thought that moving out of Purgatory would mean diving into a far deeper, far wider dating pool, but somehow it had never worked out that way. Any time someone in Arizona had shown interest, she had found herself deflecting, feeling like the time wasn’t right. She never felt settled enough to take that next step. She always felt like she was waiting for some sign that she was ready. But it just never happened.

The _clunk_ of a large mug on the table startled her out of her musing, and she shook herself back awake as Gus pushed it towards her. The mug was shaped like a smiling penguin with a scarf and ice skates, and the corner of her mouth twitched up involuntarily at the cuteness.

She picked it up, letting the smooth ceramic warm her hands. Wisps of chocolate-scented steam drifted up from the surface, making the air taste of it. It reminded her of childhood. Hot cocoa in red-rimmed mugs, and a silly homemade angel on the tree (she hadn’t _known_ they were tampons, honest). Sledding with her sister down the hill by the barn, and sitting around the fire pit, bundled in blankets and coats. Just a few sweet memories mixed in with all the bad ones.

“You don’t really think they’d tear it down, do you?” she asked aloud. Her aunt and uncle exchanged a look.

“Angel, no disrespect to your folks, but that place has been a shithole since your Daddy inherited it,” Gus said, sitting down at the table with her own mug. “If anything, I’m amazed it’s taken this long for them to go after it.”

“What you aunt _means_ ,” Curtis stepped in, his voice lower and soothing. “Is that the Homestead has needed an awful lot of repairs for an awful long time. After all these years, maybe it would be a blessing in disguise, to tear down all those old memories and give the land a fresh start.”

Waverly didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t that. She felt somehow betrayed, the shock washing away everything but the growing burn of the mug in her hands. She knew her aunt and uncle had no love lost for her dead, abusive father and his family’s property, but she had never expected that they would _want_ it torn down. Her home. Her inheritance.

“Plus, they’d have to still pay you and your sister the fair value of the place. With both of you gone, you’d have a lot more use for the money than you would that old ramshackle house.” Gus gestured dismissively at the final words, like she could shoo away the Homestead’s whole past with one wave of her hand.

The Homestead. Built by Wyatt Earp’s hands. Protected by Josiah Earp. Expanded by Edwin Earp. Neglected by Ward Earp. Abandoned by Waverly and Wynonna Earp.

But she was here now. And maybe someday, Wynonna would come back.

But if that was going to happen, she would need somewhere to come back _to_.

Her face must have given away her distress, because her uncle crossed back over to her side to pat her back with his big, comforting hand.

“Tell you what, baby girl, how ‘bout you just sleep on it. You’ve had a heck of a long day, but you’re home now, and they aren’t going to do anything until after the holiday. You’ve got time to think these things over.”

She didn’t mean to yawn, but the kitchen was warm and he wasn’t wrong, it _had_ been a long day of cars and airports and planes, and she was kind of dying to crawl into a warm bed and rest..

“Maybe,” she admitted. She pushed the cocoa across the table, back to Gus.

“You don’t want it?” Gus asked, confused.

“I’ve told you before, I’m vegan now. But thanks.” She sighed. “Goodnight.”

* * *

She retreated to the bedroom where she had spent her late childhood and teen years. It looked the same as she had left it, and the nostalgia gnawed at her. Her suitcase had been set by the dresser, and four extra blankets sat in a stack at the foot of the bed. A pile of blankets shouldn’t have been enough to bring tears to her eyes, but the room blurred around her nevertheless.

She changed into her warmest pajamas and arranged all the blankets into a protective cocoon, shielding her from the slight chill that emanated from the window.

And then she pulled out her phone and dialed a number.

A long string of rings was broken by a throaty, long-suffering groan.

“Do you have _any_ idea what time it is over here?”

“Six thirty in the morning?” Waverly guessed, scrunching up her face apologetically. The screen of her phone switched into a video call, she could see Wynonna still in bed, disheveled and half-clothed, the blankets a mess around her.

“Yeah, _six thirty_ , you monster.” Wynonna squinted through the camera. “Oh, trippy, are you actually there?”

“Yep. Just flew in. It’s so weird to be back.” She settled back against her pillow, holding the phone up to stay in view. “I mean, it’s so nice to see Gus and Uncle Curtis again. But it’s _weird_ , too.”

“Any word about the Homestead?”

Waverly sighed, remembering her trip to the municipal building, and her conversation with the deputy.

“No. I went in to ask about it, but it sounds like it’s for real. Some jerky new cop told me if we didn’t get it up to code, they’ll demolish it. I’m going to go look at it tomorrow and call a contractor, and _then_ I’m going to tell freaking _Officer Haught_ to call off her bulldozers.”

Wynonna gave her an odd look through the camera.

“The new cop is sexy?”

“What? No.” Waverly tried to call up a picture of the deputy in her head, and found herself forced to correct herself. “I mean, I guess, _objectively_ , she has a nice face. And she’s tall. And she has nice hair. And kind of a cute little spot under one eye. Oh, and I guess her eyes are kinda nice. Why?”

“Just, you called her Officer Hot.”

“Oh! No, that’s just her name. Haught, like H-A-U-G-H-T. I wasn’t saying she _was_ hot.” Ignoring the sudden burning in her cheeks, Waverly forced a laugh, but Wynonna kept giving her the same odd look.

“Right. Sorry. It’s like the middle of the night. You’re going to have to include footnotes.” Wynonna pushed her hair back from her face and rolled halfway over, propping the phone on a nightstand or something.

“Six thirty isn’t the middle of the night,” Waverly teased. Wynonna had never been a morning person, and usually Waverly was more considerate about their time differences, but tonight, she really needed to talk to her sister. “Sorry, though. I should have explained. But she said if we get it fixed up, they won’t have to tear it down.”

“Well… good. Tell me what it ends up costing. I’ll send money.”

Waverly arched a skeptical eyebrow. Wynonna was many things, but _consistently employed_ wasn’t one of them

“From what job?”

“I’ve been bartending. But I think I’ve almost got them talked into letting me DJ a few nights a week.”

“Is that what you want?”

Wynonna shrugged.

“It’s fine. Pays my rent. Doesn’t suck too bad.”

Waverly felt a sudden echo of what she had told Gus about her own job. Was ‘ _financially independent and respected in my field_ ’ her version of ‘ _pays my rent and doesn’t suck too bad_?’ She frowned in the semi-darkness.

“And is that… enough?” she asked. “Are you… happy? With that?”

Wynonna gave her a bemused look and slightly bitter laugh.

“Happiness is a lie they invented to sell ugly, overpriced rings. And religion. Why the twenty questions?”

“It’s nothing. I just… Never mind. Tell me about Greece again. What’s Christmas like there?”

She snuggled down into her pillows and listened to her sister talk about honey cookies and boats decorated with lights until everything else faded to warm static and she finally fell asleep.


	2. Once Bitten and Twice Shy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can it still be considered a "teaser" if I post two chapters that cumulatively go over 10k words? It's one of life's most challenging questions-- it's stumped philosophers for generations. Anyway, it's Monday and therefore I think we all deserve a nice warm chapter of this fic to help us brace for the upcoming week. (Plus, I don't want to leave WayHaught at loggerheads for longer than necessary.) I hope you all continue to enjoy this fic. It's been both a treat and a challenge to write it, so thanks to everyone who's been dropping kudos and comments-- they're all greatly appreciated.

* * *

_God_ , Canada was cold as balls.

Waverly had tried to steel herself both for the bite of the cold and for the emotional gut punch of seeing the Homestead again, but she didn’t think either of them had worked. The icy morning air still chilled her to the bone, and anxiety and anticipation still tingled in her limbs and roiled in her stomach.

Gus, having declared her coat inadequate, had dug some of the old winterwear out of the attic, and so Waverly was wearing a puffy pink coat straight out of her high school days, along with a pair of Gus’s gloves and boots and her uncle’s softest red scarf.

Uncle Curtis had been leery of her rental car, and had coaxed her into borrowing his truck for the day. “That little matchbox car will fly clear off those back roads on a day like today,” he’d claimed, and Waverly had to admit that he might be right. Powdery snow blew almost sideways in a brisk, biting wind, and she shuddered to imagine the rental compact fighting it on the icy roads.

Unfortunately, he also mentioned in passing that the radio was just the teensiest bit broken, in that it currently only had one volume— LOUD. From the second she started the car, country western Christmas songs roared from the speakers— no doubt her uncle’s station of choice. She could imagine his ear-splitting singing voice as he drove down the road, belting out each song. The mental image made her ache with nostalgia. Deafening as it was, she left the station on as she navigated the old country roads out to the Earp Homestead.

As she pulled out of town, she spotted a cop car hiding in a speed trap and sent a glare its way, just in case it happened to be Deputy Haught sitting there with a radar gun. The car didn’t immediately chase her down, lights flaring, so whoever it was either didn’t see or didn’t care.

The drive out was both strange and familiar. She knew the land by heart, but after she moved into her aunt and uncle’s house, there hadn’t been much reason to go back to the Homestead. It was just an empty, ramshackle building full of mostly bad memories that stank like skunk and leaked like a sieve. It wasn’t until later, after Wynonna had left, that she began to see it more rose-tinted.

Wynonna was her favorite person in the whole world, but she had been a troubled child. Both of them were, but in very different ways. Waverly’s childhood trauma had manifested as a near-pathological craving for everyone’s love and approval that it had taken her years to work through, but Wynonna’s went the other way. Wynonna’s manifested as a spiky suit of armor and a dark, intimidating aura that kept everyone at a distance. Everyone but Waverly, at least.

Their life at the Homestead, bleak as it was, had been the last time her sister had seemed whole, and sometimes she pulled those blurry memories up to the surface, remembering Wynonna’s carefree laugh as they played under the poplar tree, with their mother and eldest sister in the background.

Back in the present, Waverly rubbed her eyes and cursed the maudlin, twangy Christmas song blasting from the radio, the singer going on and on about love and family and togetherness.

This trip wasn’t _just_ about sentimentality. It couldn’t be. There were practical considerations. Historical importance. Property rights. Safety codes. That sort of thing.

She recognized the windmill first, even from a distance. Then the barn. Then the gate. And finally, way in the back, the Homestead itself.

She pulled the truck in through the gate. There had once been a sign above it that read EARP, but it was missing now, probably blown down in a storm or stolen by local teenagers on a dare.

Other things had changed, too. The barn’s door was hanging open, splintered and faded. The house’s porch slumped to one side. God only knew what it looked like on the _inside_.

Waverly parked the car alongside the house and climbed out, shivering even in her borrowed clothes.

This was it.

The Homestead.

_Home._

… Sort of…

* * *

Waverly stood in front of the old (and okay, she could admit it, _dilapidated_ ) building until the cold set her feet numb and stinging. It was only then that she gathered her strength and set her boot on the first step up to the porch.

It punched through the rotten wood with a sickening _crunch_ , leaving her startled and knee-deep in splinters.

“Woah! Frick!” She flailed her arms to keep her balance. “Okay, so that’s not encouraging…”

She extracted her leg from the step, wincing, and went in search of another way up. Off to one side, she found a more stable-seeming board by a gap in the railing and used it to clamber up instead, grateful that she had chosen jeans for this particular expedition. She squeezed through the space of the missing rail and ended up crouched on the freezing wood of the porch, holding her breath and waiting, eyes squeezed shut, for the boards to drop from under her.

After several seconds of _not_ falling, she tentatively opened her eyes and even more tentatively climbed to her feet. The porch seemed to hold, so she inched over to the door, one baby step at a time, and pulled out the key that she had borrowed from her aunt and uncle.

With a sense of trepidation, she took a deep breath and shoved the key into the lock. It made an ill-boding grinding sound of metal on metal, and as she turned it, the head of the key snapped off.

“Seriously?!” she shouted at it. She tried to turn the handle, and the whole doorknob fell off into her hand. “ _SERIOUSLY_?!?!?!” She tried to stick it back on, failed, tried to pull the key fragment out of the lock, failed, and finally gave up with a disconsolate moan.

Her feet were _freezing_. And her leg was sore where it had gone through the step. And her ears were reminding her that she had neglected to borrow a hat for the trip.

She shoved the door, half-hoping that it would just fall open as the rotting wood gave way, and half-afraid of the same thing. Fortunately and unfortunately, the door seemed to be the one solid piece left in the building— it barely rattled, even when she tried to ram it with her shoulder.

“Ow! Crud!” She rubbed the now-protesting joint. “That always works in the movies!” Reluctantly giving up for the moment, she retraced her steps and dismounted from the porch.

The cold was starting to become unbearable, and she fantasized about hopping back into the truck and retreating back to her aunt and uncle’s house to sip hot tea under warm blankets. But she had already driven all the way out here, and she had no intention of leaving empty-handed.

She circled the house, racking her brain for memories of the layout, until she found a loose window that seemed willing to be persuaded by a firm push. She muscled it open, provoking a terrible scraping sound, and tried to clamber through.

She was too short.

“It’s like you don’t even _want_ to be saved,” she accused the house, stumping back to the truck and grabbing up her uncle’s toolbox to use as a step up. With those extra inches of height, she managed to wedge herself through the open window. Her sense of victory lasted about as long as it took to fall back down the other side, where the impact of her rough landing knocked the air out of her lungs.

She lay there for a moment, stunned, staring up at the ceiling of her childhood home.

It was surreal.

And cold.

The air inside the Homestead was barely warmer than the air outside.

Groaning and rubbing at her back, she used the wall to pull herself upright. She could still see her breath clouding in the air, making her think of ghosts. The Homestead had always felt a little haunted, even when they had all lived there. Now, they could have rented it out as a Halloween destination.

Inside, dust coated every surface. There were dark stains on the ceiling and warped boards in the floor from years of incremental water damage. Waverly walked slowly from room to room, leaving wet footprints of snow in the dust. There was still a surprising amount of furniture, in various states of disrepair. The small, ancient fridge sat unplugged next to the cold stove. Wobbly wooden chairs stood around a heavy wooden table. With a shiver, she remembered her father sitting at it, his sheriff’s uniform rumpled, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

She tugged her uncle’s scarf higher, trying to keep out the ghosts.

A bed frame holding a bare mattress stood in the master bedroom, surrounded by dressers with open, empty drawers. She didn’t risk going upstairs yet, her leg unwilling to relive the shock of the porch step. Instead, she took a second to inspect the wood stove in the front room. A small pile of exceedingly dry firewood was still piled next to it, and a cursory inspection didn’t reveal any obvious flaws.

She piled a few of the smaller logs inside, along with some scraps of ancient newspaper, and lit the whole lot with a box of matches found at the back of a cabinet. She waited on the floor next to it, shivering, as the newspaper curled and the flames licked at the logs until they caught. Slowly, the temperature rose from “unbearably freezing” to merely “cold.” But feeling was already returning to her legs, and she was able to relax her jaw as heat radiated out through the cast iron.

She sat there, on the hard floor, until her thoughts cleared and her anxiety ebbed. The Homestead obviously needed some work if she wanted it to be liveable. There were holes that needed patched, boards that needed replaced, probably any number of windows and doors that needed to be rehung— not to mention the broken doorknob.

But before anything, they would need electricity and running water. Which meant getting the utilities turned back on.

With a sigh, she looked up the phone number for the municipal utilities and placed the call, bracing herself for news of a long wait or some kind of complex series of redirections.

“Hi, my name is Waverly Gibson. I mean, Earp. Waverly Earp. I own a property outside of town and need to get the utilities turned back on.”

“Oh yeah,” the woman on the other end of the line said brightly. “Haught said you might call about that today.”

The name piqued Waverly’s attention, and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously..

“Did she? And is there some _problem_ with getting the utilities turned back on?” The cop hadn’t seemed intent on literal sabotage, but maybe she asked them to drag their feet, so that the city could claim the property sooner.

“Nope! We can get someone out tomorrow, or maybe the next day at the latest. She just wanted to make sure we were ready for it if you called.”

“Oh.” Waverly frowned, suddenly feeling sheepish and caught on the wrong foot. “Um… good. Okay.”

They went over billing specifics, and riding that wave of success, Waverly began looking up as many phone numbers as she could for local home repair companies, making herself a list to work through.

She would get this done. She would save the house. And then she would go back to Arizona, where she would have plenty of time and distance to decide what to do with it.

* * *

“What do you mean ‘no way?!’” she demanded, outraged.

“Sorry, Wave, but there’s no way my boys would agree to work on the Murder House. You of all people know its reputation. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just driving past. You couldn’t pay me enough to set foot inside.”

“Isn’t your whole _business_ fixing old houses? You can’t be _scared_ of one! I’m standing in it right now, and it’s fine!” As if to mock her, there was a small _crash_ from the other side of the house as something fell over. “It just needs some TLC. And some elbow grease.”

“You’re talking about a whole tanker truck of elbow grease, Wave.” His repeated use of her nickname just made her want to grind her teeth.

“Fine, _Kyle_ , if you don’t want my business, I’ll take it somewhere else.”

He cheerfully wished her the best of luck in finding a more willing company, which made her feel a little bad about punching the “end call” button so forcefully, but she couldn’t help it.

“Jerk,” she grumbled, crossing the name off her list.

But an accurate jerk, as it turned out. She called two more local companies and even a handful from the City, and every one of them turned her down— the locals out of superstition, the city contractors because she couldn’t afford the price of them driving out there.

She had really counted on the York brothers (Kyle and Pete, who now apparently owned the most reputable construction company in town) giving her a good deal. They had both harbored crushes on Wynonna at various points back in high school, and Pete had even asked Waverly out once or twice while she was on the outs with Champ. She hadn’t expected them to still believe in that stupid _Murder House_ bullshit.

Waverly sat on the floor and buried her face in her hands, groaning.

Solutions. She didn’t need tears, she needed solutions.

She could take Wynonna up on her offer to loan her money and hire one of the City contractors. Or ask Gus and Curtis for help.

She could _murder_ Pete and Kyle. Or, perhaps more helpfully, she could try to convince them or bribe them into working on the house anyway. Maybe if she agreed to go on a date with Pete, he would cut her some slack.

Or… maybe…

She looked around herself. Seeing the house in person, she couldn’t _entirely_ blame the town for calling it unlivable. But she _could_ blame them for being overdramatic about it. The house was bad, but maybe not _that_ bad. And the bar they were looking to clear was “ _livable_ ,” not “ _perfect_.” Maybe she could attempt some of the smaller repairs herself.

With the worst of the damage patched up and the utilities turned back on, surely they would at least have to re-inspect it. Maybe that would be enough to save it, or at least drop it down their list of priorities. Maybe that would get it _just_ passable enough to squeak past the condemnation threat.

But _could_ she do it? She looked down at her hands. Soft. Manicured. Uncalloused. She’d had a rough-and-tumble childhood with parents who believed in hard work, but she had spent her entire adult life behind books.

Had she ever done any extensive home repair in her life? No.

But she was smart. And determined. And she came from a family of strong, independent women. Her mom had been tough as nails, and Wynonna and Willa had both been like boot leather. She could do this. She could. She _would_.

And, fittingly enough, she would start with the front door.

* * *

She knew enough about locks that she knew that they _could_ be replaced, and that it didn’t _look_ very hard in her (admittedly brief) online research. So she climbed back out the window (hopefully for the last time) and set off for the hardware store, bubble-gum-pop Christmas music blasting from the speakers at bone-rattling volume.

_Christmassssss— The snow’s comin’ down— I’m watchin’ it fall— Lots of people around— Baby please come home!_

It was strangely calming, driving her uncle’s pickup through fields and fields of white, with mountains and forests rolling in the distance. The landscape _felt_ right, in a way that the Arizona desert never had. The snow seemed to somehow muffle everything. It felt insulating. Protective. Even the 100-decibel Christmas music couldn’t disturb the feeling of peace it gave her.

She had spent years attempting meditation and yoga and all kinds of other ways to find inner peace, but none of them held a candle to driving a truck down the empty, snow-blanketed Alberta backroads.

By the time she got to the hardware store, she was warm from the truck’s heater and calm from the drive through the countryside. She was ready to get down to business. She could do this.

The bell jingled over her head as she entered the store, but she didn’t see anyone at the counter. The hardware store was owned by Mr. James, her ex-boyfriend’s father, who was a very kind and gregarious man— but a very disorganized shopkeeper.

The shop’s interior was a study in chaos. Once upon a time, it had only consisted of the front room, but it had grown over the years— first, taking over the shop next door, and then building a garage and warehouse behind each, making it a sort of four-part Frankenstein of a building. Waverly had always found it charming. It was the kind of thing that would never happen at a big franchise store in the city. It made the store feel special, like something that was unique to Purgatory alone.

However, the lawless structure of the shop became less and less charming by the second, as she walked slowly down the aisles, searching for anything resembling a door lock. Plumbing equipment sat on shelves next to coils of rope and boxes of window blinds. None of the aisles were labeled. There was no apparent logic to anything’s location. Christmas music echoed from another part of the complex.

After ten minutes of fruitless searching, her sense of calm began waning.

“Hello?” she called, standing on her tiptoes to see over a stack of paint cans. “Mr. James?”

She tried following the sound of the music, through the front room, back to the warehouse in the back. It was colder back there, and she buried her hands in her pockets, repressing a shiver. At long last, she spotted the older man back in the corner of the warehouse, talking to someone in a long brown coat and green stocking cap. He was leaning next to a boom box that was, at the moment, spewing _Holly Jolly Christmas_ for all it was worth, which probably explained why he hadn’t heard her calling for him.

He was a big man, like his son, built like a lumberjack with a bushy beard that was just starting to gray. In a few years, he would make quite the convincing Santa Claus, hopefully giving Nedley a much-needed break from the yearly gig.

She waved her arms, trying to get his attention, and when he finally looked up, his whole face lit up like a Christmas tree. He turned down the volume on the radio, giving her a huge grin.

“Well look who it is, after all these years!” He elbowed the person he’d been talking to. “Deputy, you’re new to town, so you probably don’t even know who that is!”

_Deputy? Oh please no…_

The figure turned around, and Waverly recognized the face of one Officer Haught, blinking back at her, apparently startled by her presence. She looked different out of uniform— less polished, more wild, less rehearsed, more real. Her hair, long and blazing red, seemed to spill down the front of her jacket, and her dark eyes seemed to catch the intermittent flash of the twinkle lights strung along the walls.

“Ms. Gibson-Earp,” the tall woman said warily. Waverly winced slightly.

“Um… Just one or the other is fine,” she said, smiling sheepishly. Now that she was less jet-lagged, the memory of their conversation in the municipal building made her want to cringe.

“Which one?” Haught asked, her tone careful and polite.

It should have been an easy question. She had been Waverly Gibson for years now. The name Earp had been like a curse in town, and using her aunt’s maiden name, her mother’s maiden name, had felt easier. But something about being back on the Earp Homestead made nostalgia well up inside her.

“Earp,” she said, surprising even herself.

“Okay then. Waverly Earp.”

Something about the way the name tripped off her tongue made it sound rhythmic, almost poetic. For the first time in her life, the combination sounded _good_. It sounded like it fit. A blessing, not a curse.

The moment was ruined by Mr. James lumbering over and clapping her enthusiastically on the shoulder.

“Waverly Earp, back in town after all these years!” he said excitedly. The name sounded okay from his lips, but not as nice as it had from Deputy Haught’s. She wondered why. “My boy’s going to be so happy to hear you’re back home. You remember my boy, right? Champ? He moped around for months like a lost puppy when you moved down to Arkansas or wherever. I ought to tell him you’re back.”

“Arizona,” she corrected automatically, not really listening. The deputy’s eyes were still on her, and for some reason, that fact was bogarting all of her attention.

“I’m gonna go call him. He’ll be so excited!” Mr. James continued, striding away before Waverly could fully register what he’d said.

And then she and Off-Duty-Officer Haught were just standing there in the warehouse, while the radio switched to _Last Christmas_. The taller woman still seemed wary of her, like she was waiting to see what she would say or do.

“I’m sorry,” Waverly burst out, making her jump. “For yesterday. You probably think I’m some kind of crazy harpy, but I promise, I’m usually _way_ nicer than that. I was just jet-lagged and cold and frustrated, and upset about the house, and I _really_ hate flying, and I took it all out on you. I’m sorry.” She could feel herself starting to ramble and cut herself off, feeling flustered.

Haught’s stance seemed to relax slightly. It clearly hadn’t been what she had expected. Waverly could see an uncertainty in her eyes, watched her teeter between accepting the apology and holding her ground, but after a few seconds, a small smile softened her face and warmed her eyes.

“Ah… Don’t worry about it,” she said, her voice several degrees friendlier than it had been. “I could tell you were upset about the house, and I wasn’t exactly at my best either. Besides, it wasn’t exactly my most harrowing moment on the job.”

Their eyes met, and she widened her smile, causing a pair of dimples to appear on her cheeks, and Waverly felt suddenly much warmer than the chilly warehouse justified. Here, out of uniform and smiling, the other woman looked a lot less intimidating… and yet… Waverly still felt inexplicably flustered.

“No, I wouldn’t think so…” Waverly said, shivering under the other woman’s attention. “Anyway, I’m just here to, you know... “ She gestured vaguely at the tools around them. “Start getting it un-condemned.”

Haught’s brow furrowed, her smile fading slightly.

“You’re going to fix it yourself?” she asked, looking surprised and a little worried. Waverly felt a wave of defensiveness rear inside her.

“Why not? You don’t think I’m capable of it?” she said, daring the cop to say otherwise. She could practically see Haught mentally backpedalling.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just… that’s a lot of work for one person. Trust me, I should know.”

There wasn’t any condescension in her voice— just a healthy dose of concern.

“Yeah, well…” Waverly sighed, capitulating somewhat. “I’d _planned_ to hire contractors to do it, but everyone in town said no.”

Haught looked bewildered.

“All of them? Why?”

“The house has kind of a bad reputation in this town. So does my family, for that matter.”

“Hence the different last names?”

Waverly’s hands worried each other restlessly, half from the cold and half from nerves.

“Yeah. Gibson was my mother’s maiden name, and my aunt’s. It was… easier, than being an Earp.”

It had the air of a confession, and she wasn’t sure she would have admitted it in front of a lifelong Purgatorian, but it felt different to tell someone new, someone without those preconceived notions about her and her family and their home. For a second, she wondered if she had said too much, but Haught’s eyes were focused on her, and there was that rush of warmth again.

“Well… I’m no contractor, but I’ve been doing a lot of my own home repair lately, so if you need any advice or help, consider me an open book.”

“Thanks, um… Officer.”

“Nicole,” Haught corrected her. “Out of uniform, I’m just Nicole.”

“Okay… Nicole.” The name seemed to suit her. _Nicole Haught_. It had a nice ring to it. “Um… since you’re here, and Mr. James isn’t… can I maybe pick your brain about replacing door locks?”

Waverly offered a wide, hopeful, smile, hoping it wouldn’t sound too presumptive. Luckily, Nicole brightened instantly at the request, and seemed to stand taller.

“Sure. Did you have trouble getting in, or do you just want to replace it for security reasons?”

“Trouble getting in. The key broke off in the lock, which would have been okay, but then the doorknob fell off, too.”

Nicole gave a surprised laugh. Waverly didn’t blame her, even though it had seemed _extremely_ unfunny just a few minutes ago.

“Well that definitely _would_ be a problem. Although on the bright side, that probably means you don’t have to worry about squatters.”

“So no secret meth labs or stolen property warehouses?” Waverly asked, a very slight edge in her voice.

“Well… probably not,” Nicole admitted. “If you couldn’t get in, probably nobody else could either.”

“I got in, but I had to climb through a window to do it.” Not her most graceful moment, but it had gotten the job done.

“Oh, did you try opening the door from the inside?”

“Yeah, but the doorknob was too loose. It didn’t seem to do anything when I turned it.”

“Right, okay…” Nicole seemed to mull over the question for a moment. “If the doorknob got separated from the spindle, you might be able to just put it back together, but it would be smarter to install a new one anyway.”

“And you know how to do that?” Waverly asked. Nicole nodded, looking comfortingly unfazed by the prospect.

“Sure, it’s easy. I had to do it with a closet door in my house when I first moved in. I can show you if you want.”

Waverly’s heart leapt with a sudden burst of hope. If she couldn’t get contractors or locksmiths to come out to the so-called _Murder House_ , maybe she could at least get a knowledgeable amateur on the case.

“Only if you let me pay you for your trouble,” she said quickly. Nicole looked surprised by the caveat, and she hesitated for a moment, looking like she was on the brink of starting an argument.

But then their eyes locked for several seconds, and something seemed to change. Her smile widened again, taking on a twist of cockiness.

“Okay, but my rates are _very_ competitive,” she said, now with a hint of teasing in her voice. She paused, as though for effect. “You’ll owe me _one_ , maybe even _two_ cups of coffee sometime. Deal?”

“Coffee?” Waverly echoed, surprised.

“They do _have_ coffee in Purgatory, don’t they? I’m sure I’ve seen people around here drinking it.”

Waverly peered into her face, trying to read her expression as the tone of the conversation seemed to shift under her feet.

“They do, although the best place for it probably isn’t where you would expect,” Waverly said carefully.

“Oh, a Purgatory hidden gem? Well, lucky me to get the inside scoop.” Nicole hooked her thumbs in her pockets, grinning with a small, teasing glint in her eye. “Word is that you’ve been out of town for a long time, though. Are you sure it hasn’t changed?”

Waverly gave a loud, sarcastic laugh. _Ha!_

“Trust me, I’m sure.” Some businesses may have turned over without her knowledge, but one never would. And with Gus as a partial owner, if it _were_ ever going to change, or— god forbid— _close_ , she would have heard about it. “Do you take your payment in advance?”

Nicole raised her eyebrows just a hair.

“You mean today? Right now?”

At her question, Waverly immediately started to back down. The last thing she needed was to scare off the one person in town who had offered to help her.

“Oh! Sorry, it doesn’t have to be now. I mean, obviously you’re here for a reason, too. I’m not trying to take you away from what you were doing.”

“No, today’s fine. I was just checking.” Nicole began slowly leading them away from the radio, which had switched to _It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year_. “It’s good, actually. To be honest, I like to keep busy on my days off, and since it’s too cold to do anything outside, I’ve been going a little stir-crazy. I was just here looking for ideas for new projects.”

“Well, you might have just found one.”

Nicole gave a small chuckle.

“Lucky me…”


	3. But You Still Catch My Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter went so long that I had to chop it in two because the editing was becoming too unwieldy, but here we are! Is this still a teaser? Or am I just posting it now? Who knows?! Not me! Featured in this chapter: Some coffee, a lot of slightly fluffy banter, my joking allusion to Nicole's mysterious S1 accent, and Waverly trying to talk herself out of an unwanted attraction (because that always works, right?). The next part will probably post on Friday, editing permitting. I hope you can all find some holiday spirit, and I hope you enjoy the story. We still have plenty left to go! Fire up the wassail and grab yourself some peppermint bark!

* * *

After some trial and error and one half-serious suggestion about deploying bread crumbs, they found the doorknobs sitting between a shelf of refrigerator lights and a display of chainsaw blades. Waverly chose one that looked like the original while Nicole hunted down Mr. James.

With the purchase accomplished, Waverly confidently led the way to the best coffee in Purgatory. It was walking distance, so they went on foot, Nicole keeping her step even with Waverly’s despite her longer legs. It was cold, but the wind had died down, and as they walked, snow drifted around them in huge, powdery flakes.

“The bar?” Nicole asked, bemused, snow clinging to her hair and clothes, as they stood in front of the double doors to Shorty’s Saloon. Waverly shrugged, grinning up at her.

“Hey, believe it or not, they have a much better, much fancier coffee machine than the bakery does. And they don’t overcharge like Mrs. Tatenhill at the diner does.”

Nicole still looked skeptical, but Waverly tugged at her arm, pulling her towards the doors.

“Are they even open at this hour?” Nicole asked dubiously, nevertheless allowing herself to be pulled a few steps closer.

“No, but they will be in ten minutes.”

“Okay. That’s not too long.”

Waverly watched her pull up the collar of her coat, clearly preparing for a frigid ten-minute wait outside. As if Waverly were actually willing to stand outside in this kind of weather.

“Lucky for you, you’re with me today, so that rule doesn’t apply to us,” Waverly said lightly, pushing through the doors like she did it every day— after all, there was a time in her life where she _did_ do that every day. After a moment of confused hesitation, Nicole followed.

Stepping into the bar was almost more like coming home than the Homestead or her uncle’s house had been. The smell, citrus floor cleaner and old wood and stale cigarette smoke and a hundred different kinds of mingled liquors, threatened to pull her back in time. She had spent years here, helping Gus out and eventually picking up shifts as a bartender once she was old enough. It wasn’t as _impressive_ a job as being a historical consultant, but she had liked it.

Sometimes she missed the straightforwardness of her bartending days, and the sense of camaraderie. Shorty’s was the living, beating heart of the town, and working there had made her feel like an essential part of the community. Everyone knew her, and she knew everyone. She saw the same faces every day, day in and day out, and always knew what was going on in their lives. She knew which taps tended to stick, which tables were wobbly, which customers got rowdy after too many drinks.

It felt good to be back.

“We’re not open yet!” called a voice from the kitchen, and Waverly felt a grin spread across her face. She knew that voice. She hopped up on one of the barstools and waited for him to emerge.

“Even for me?” she wheedled, as Shorty himself came into view. His eyes fell on her, and he barked a surprised laugh.

“Well well well, Purgatory’s prodigal daughter returns,” he said, walking up and leaning against the bar across from her. “Here to pick up a few shifts?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Waverly said, although it was a strangely tempting thought. “Just back for the holidays. And to deal with some property stuff.”

“Gus mentioned something like that. Said your family’s old Homestead was about to be torn down.” He sounded neutral on the subject, which she supposed was a step up from Gus’s stance of ‘good riddance.’

“Yep, but I’m going to stop that from happening.” She glanced back towards Nicole, who was still standing awkwardly by the door, pretending to look at a portrait of Wyatt Earp, clearly trying not to disturb their reunion. “And Nicole here is going to help me.”

Nicole looked up at the sound of her name, and Shorty nodded at her.

“Deputy,” he greeted politely, and Nicole nodded back. “You sure picked the right person to show you around the town. Waverly here is the nicest person in town. And that’s not me being biased, I mean _officially_. There was a vote and everything.”

He said it in an affectionately teasing tone, and Nicole looked amused by this new information.

“A vote? Did it come with a trophy?” she asked, half to Waverly and half to Shorty.

“A sash,” Waverly admitted, making Nicole’s smile widen, revealing a pair of slight dimples.

Waverly wondered if the sash was still buried somewhere in Gus’s attic, or if it had been thrown away over the years. She kind of hoped it had survived. It was silly, but she had been proud of it at the time. It had felt like proof that she was starting to escape the shadow of her family name.

“Yep, even beat out Shannon Cooper for it,” Shorty added, and Nicole raised her eyebrows.

“That’s impressive. Shannon Cooper is _very_ nice. She brought me a basket of cookies as a housewarming gift when I first moved in,” Nicole said.

Waverly felt an unexpected blaze of jealousy light her up from the inside, burning at the thought. She couldn’t tell if it was just their old rivalry rearing its ugly head or if it was the thought of _Shannon Cooper_ cozying up to Nicole, trying to impress her or ingratiate herself to her. Probably hoping to get out of future speeding tickets or something. As she steamed, Nicole seemed to be watching her, a light dancing in her eyes, as though she could read her mind.

“So, it was _almost_ as nice as when I first met you,” Nicole continued, some light teasing in her voice.

Waverly felt the same heat flood her cheeks.

Fresh cookies versus a jet-lagged temper tantrum. Shannon Cooper really _had_ bested her this time. If she _did_ find that old sash, she ought to turn it over to her in defeat.

“I told you I was sorry about that,” she groaned, slumping onto the bar and covering her face. Nicole chuckled like it really didn’t matter. “Add another coffee to my invoice,” Waverly mumbled into her hands.

“Are you sure? Coffee doesn’t grow on trees, you know,” Nicole joked.

“Well, it does, actually,” Waverly said, just to be pedantic. “But I think I can afford it.” She turned back to the barkeeper. “Shorty, we’re here for some coffee.”

“Bar doesn’t open for another five minutes. You’ll have to wait outside,” he said, his face grim and his tone severe. Not buying it for a second, Waverly fixed him with a pleading, angelic expression. He caved instantly, shaking his head. “Alright, alright, I guess I can make an exception. _This time_. But don’t get used to it.” He said it gruffly, but she knew it was all an act. She rewarded him with one of her most winning smiles.

“Thanks, Shorty. You’re the best.”

Nicole was still hanging back, so Waverly waved her closer. She slid onto the adjacent barstool while Shorty fired up the machine.

“What’ll you have?” he asked them both.

“Coffee. Extra sugar. And do you have almond milk?” Waverly asked hopefully.

“I think so. I’ll have to check it’s still good. We don’t get much of a call for it.” He looked towards Nicole. “And you?”

“Cappuccino?” she said, her voice a question, as though she wasn’t sure if it was an option or not. But Shorty nodded.

Within a few minutes, he was sliding a mug across the bar to each of them.

“No charge, deputy,” he said, earning a questioning look. “I heard about you dealing with those frat boys here the other night. Consider this a thank you.”

Nicole shook her head, looking uncomfortable.

“I was just doing my job.”

“And I’m just doing mine. So drink your coffee.” She looked like she was tempted to keep arguing, but finally nodded. She still looked uncomfortable, so Waverly spoke up again, in hopes of distracting her.

“Probably doesn’t count as me buying it if he just gives it to you, does it?” she sighed with feigned woe, and Nicole’s frown quirked back upwards.

“I’ll just add another to your invoice,” she offered.

“This might turn out to be a lot of coffees. Are you sure you don’t want to cash out?” Waverly asked. Nicole shook her head, raising the mug to her lips. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark room.

“Nope, I’m perfectly happy with my payment plan.”

* * *

For a cop and a stranger, Nicole was surprisingly good company. She gave Waverly her full focus as she talked, her warm brown eyes tracking her every movement. As they finished their first cup of coffee in the warm interior of the bar, they both took their coats off, and Nicole removed her hat. She took a moment to smooth out her bright red hair from where the hat had left it mussed and staticky, and Waverly found it hard to not watch. Shorty or Gus or someone had strung colored lights around the bar, and the way they tinted the light and reflected off her hair was hard to look away from.

She must have been caught staring, because their eyes met momentarily, and the cocky smile returned to Nicole’s lips.

Waverly cleared her throat awkwardly and gestured to her coffee mug.

“See, what did I tell you? Best coffee in town.”

“It’s good. To be fair, though, the only coffee I’ve had that didn’t come from my kitchen is in the department break room. And it doesn’t take a lot to beat that.”

“I’m betting that Purgatory municipal taxes aren’t high enough for premium roast.”

“Hardly. I’ve started to suspect that Nedley buys it out of his own pocket.” Nicole leaned closer and lowered her voice as though speaking confidentially. “I get the feeling that somewhere under that giant mustache, he’s actually a big softie.”

Waverly smiled, a touch wryly. It was true, sort of. Waverly knew from a lifetime of one-on-one experiences— both when serving him at Shorty’s and when visiting with Chrissy— that Randy Nedley was a kind man.

But it was also true that just like everyone else in town, that kindness had a blind spot, and that blind spot was named Wynonna Earp. Whatever kindness and mercy was hidden under the grizzled sheriff’s gruff exterior, it hadn’t been extended to her sister.

Just like her aunt and uncle. Just like the whole town.

“Yeah, he is…” Waverly warmed her hands on the plain white ceramic mug, trying to dredge up the good memories without bringing the bad with them.

“Everything okay?”

Waverly looked over at the question and found Nicole scrutinizing her face. It made her wonder if she was giving away more than she thought, or if the rookie cop was just too perceptive.

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Randy Nedley definitely has a soft side. Have you met his daughter, Chrissy?”

“Just once, in passing. She stopped by on my first day and said hi. She seemed nice. I get the feeling Nedley wants us to be friends. He told me her best friend moved away some years ago and never… Oh...” Nicole broke off awkwardly, apparently noticing the sudden jolt of pain that crossed Waverly’s face. There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.

“I tried to stay in contact, but…” Waverly trailed off, shame burning her alive.

She _had_ tried. At first it had been okay. They had talked on the phone once a week, and exchanged texts and social media posts. Chrissy had been _dying_ for all the details about life ‘in the real world,’ as she called it. Life beyond Purgatory. Waverly sent her some kitschy Tombstone souvenirs, and Chrissy sent her pictures and greetings from everyone in town.

But over time, it had felt like they had less and less to talk about, and eventually, phone calls turned into emails, which dwindled into occasional texts, which finally petered out into silence.

Maybe she should have tried harder. Maybe they both should have.

“That’s normal, though,” Nicole said charitably. “I mean, before coming here, I moved around a lot, so trust me, I get it. It’s hard to keep up with people after you move away. You lose some of that connection.” Nicole rested a hand on her arm for a few seconds, and Waverly did take some comfort from it. It was warm, and surprisingly gentle. “But hey, now that you’re back in town, maybe you two can catch up again. It’s never too late.”

That was a somewhat cheering thought.

“Yeah, I’ll have to call her.” Hoping to move to a less revealing subject, Waverly grasped at something Nicole had mentioned. “So what brought you to Purgatory? If you used to move around a lot.”

“My great aunt died,” she said, her tone more casual than the words themselves seemed to justify.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry!”

“No, it’s okay. I... didn’t even know she existed,” Nicole admitted, a bit sheepishly. “But she’d inherited my aunt and uncle’s old house after they died twenty years ago, and she willed it to me. I’m not sure _why_ , except that she probably figured that my parents wouldn’t be interested, or maybe even that they weren't trustworthy enough to deal with it. Or maybe she knew I lived nearby— I was in training in the Big City at the time. But whatever her reasoning, she left it to me.”

“So you just inherited a house out of nowhere?”

“Pretty much.” Nicole shrugged, but looked thoughtful. She swirled the coffee left in her mug, turning the foam into a little whirlpool. “I thought about selling it, but… I don’t know, it didn’t seem right. I remembered staying there when I was a kid, and how much I liked it, and how much I liked my aunt and uncle. It kinda seemed like a shame to just sell it off, especially when it had been in the family for so long. So I sent my resumé in to Nedley, and he just about hired me on the spot, so as soon as I graduated, I just moved in.”

“Wow... just like that?” It sounded fast, but she supposed her own move to Tombstone hadn’t been _much_ more elaborate than that.

“Yeah. I mean, sort of. There were a lot more logistics than that, obviously. The place was a mess when I moved in. My great aunt had moved to a nursing home or something for the last years of her life, so the place had been empty for years, and it wasn’t exactly a new house to start with.”

Waverly pictured the abandoned Homestead, full of dust and stale air and rusting appliances.

“Sounds familiar…”

“But it was liveable, and I’ve always loved fixing things, so I’ve been working on it for the past few months. You should see it now, it’s in _much_ better shape.”

“Well, lucky me, then. Maybe you can give me tips for the Homestead.”

* * *

Before too long, they weren’t the only people in the bar anymore. Once it opened properly, regulars began to trickle in and take up their usual haunts. Waverly recognized most of them from her days working the counter. She kept thinking about excusing herself and going to say hello to all of them, but then Nicole would say something that would recapture her attention and the thought of leaving would slip away. 

Waverly chipped away at her better-than-average coffee with its extra sugar and almond milk while Nicole regaled her with stories about her adventures in amateur home repair. 

“You got _trapped_ under your own _porch_?” Waverly asked incredulously, trying not to laugh at the mental image. Nicole had the grace to look sheepish, even though she was the one who had willingly brought it up. 

“I did make it out eventually,” she said, a little defensively, although she was still smiling. Waverly pretended to roll her eyes in exasperation. 

“I _did_ guess that much, since you’re sitting here now,” Waverly pointed out, still biting back a laugh. 

“Nothing gets by you,” Nicole said dryly. 

“Big words from someone who got trapped under their own porch.” 

“ _Trapped_ is a strong word,” Nicole disagreed. “There was just even less room than I was expecting. And it was _really_ muddy, which made it hard to crawl around.” 

Waverly wrinkled her nose. Crawling under a porch sounded bad enough without the prospect of mud. 

“Ew, that sounds disgusting. I won’t have to do that for the Homestead, will I?” 

“Probably not,” Nicole reassured her. “And even if you did, now that it’s winter, the ground is probably going to be frozen for weeks, if not months, so… no mud.” 

“Well… I guess I could handle that.” 

It seemed somehow ironic that Waverly had lived in Arizona for years and barely made any friends, but the second she stepped foot back in Purgatory, she was hitting it off with the first new person she met. One cup of coffee turned into two, and then Waverly refused to imbibe a third on an otherwise empty stomach, so they were now splitting a plate of fries— one of the vanishingly few vegan-friendly things on the menu.

“Tombstone? Really? I bet they were excited to get someone with your last name working there,” Nicole said, pushing the plate back towards her.

“Actually… I applied under my aunt’s name, Gibson.”

“Really? How come?” Nicole sounded innocently interested, like she really couldn’t think of a reason, so Waverly made the uneasy decision to tell her the truth.

“The last name Earp is kind of a curse. At least it always has been around here. And I don’t know, I kind of wanted to prove that I could get the job without it.”

“What do you mean by ‘cursed?’” Nicole asked curiously. It must have seemed funny to someone who hadn’t grown up with it. After all, they were sitting in a bar full of Wyatt Earp memorabilia, underneath a sign that read _Drink Where Wyatt Earp Did_.

Waverly shook her head and shrugged.

“Supersitition, I guess? Or maybe just…” She sighed. “Before Nedley was sheriff here, my dad was. And he… wasn’t the best man. And wasn’t the best sheriff. And then after he died, my sister Wynonna started acting out a lot. Just dumb teenager stuff, but the way you hear people talk now, you’d think she was the Antichrist.”

“Hence the international travel?” Nicole guessed, her voice gentle, as though she could hear the pain of the past in Waverly’s words.

“Yeah. I don’t think anyone in town actually wants her here except me.”

The conversation suddenly felt heavy— too heavy for two people in their shoes, and Waverly excused herself to the restroom for a moment’s break. She slipped away to the back of the bar and into the ladies room. She took a long moment at the sink, smoothing out her hair and splashing water on her face. She felt flushed with warmth, and like her heart was beating fast, and she wasn’t sure how much of it she could blame on the coffee.

She hadn’t come to Purgatory to make friends or find love… which made her body and mind’s disproportionate interest in Nicole… inconvenient. She didn’t _want_ to feel so drawn to the sound of Nicole’s laugh, or the sparkle in her eyes. She didn’t _want_ her skin to tingle from the weight of Nicole’s gaze.

Even if it felt good. Even if it felt _really_ good.

“You’re just here for the Homestead,” she whispered to herself, willing the feelings to go away. “You aren’t staying. There’s nothing for you here.”

She dried her face, gathered herself, and returned to where Nicole was waiting for her at the bar. Two fresh cups of coffee had appeared while she was gone, and she wondered if they were compliments of Shorty or if Nicole had paid for them. She internally added another tally to her coffee debt.

She pulled the mug towards her and took a sip while she planned a way to shift the converstion away from heavy topics like her last name and her cursed family.

But it turned out not to be necessary. As if sensing her need for a change of topic, Nicole cleared her throat slightly and spoke up.

“You know, I’ve been to Arizona a few times, but I never went to Tombstone. I was usually there for the nature sites— the Petrified Forest, Saguaro, Horseshoe Bend. For some reason, I didn’t think to go to Tombstone.”

Waverly recognized the names from maps and her coworkers, and felt a sudden pang of disappointment that she had never sought them out. She had never been especially outdoorsy, and on top of that, had never fully adapted to the heat of the Southwest. She had grown up with snow, she _understood_ snow. Sand was a whole different story.

“That’s a long way to travel from here,” she pointed out, trying to imagine flying all the way down to the desert just to hike around under the unforgiving sun. She nearly shuddered at the thought of more international flights.

Nicole looked unfazed.

“Well, it was forever ago, _long_ before I moved up here. I lived in Texas for awhile back when I was younger, and I would take weekend trips out to go hiking or climbing.”

“You moved _here_ from Texas? How? And why?” She knew from experience how different Alberta was from the American Southwest.

“Technically, I moved _here_ from the Big City, where I moved to after Ottawa, where I moved to after Chicago, where I moved to after Texas.” Nicole gesticulated with a fry as though pointing out dots on a map. “But I _did_ live there, I can prove it.” Her eyes seemed to challenge Waverly to ask her how.

“How can you prove it?” Waverly played along.

“Well you see, if I have a _lot_ to drink, and if I’m in good enough company, and if _all_ the right planets align… I can dredge up the old accent.”

Waverly tried to imagine Nicole with a Texan accent and nearly laughed.

“And how drunk is that?” she goaded, suddenly dying to hear the sound of it. “Because you may have noticed, we’re actually in a bar _right now_ , and there is a _lot_ of alcohol around.”

“I think it’s still a little early in the day for that,” Nicole pointed out, laughing.

“Yeah, but my aunt is the partial owner of this bar, plus I worked here for years, so the rules don’t really apply.”

Nicole’s eyes glinted a little, like she was considering the offer.

“Maybe not yet. But I’ll remember the offer.”

* * *

“Is the electricity going at your house yet?” Nicole asked in a brief lull between topics.

“It wasn’t when I left, but the utilities company said they were going to get it up as soon as they could. Why?”

“I was just thinking, if we want to get your door lock replaced, we should probably do it while we still have full daylight. If there’s one thing I’ve learned living out in the boonies, it’s that it gets _dark_. And doing home repairs in the dark is… tricky.”

“Oh, God, is it getting that late?” Waverly instinctively looked to the clock that had hung on the barroom wall for pretty much her entire life.

It was missing, which was somehow jarring. Had it been broken? Smashed in a drunken brawl? Knocked down during a big storm? Or something more basic, just running too fast or too slow until they finally took it down? It felt unsettling not to know.

She checked her phone instead and saw that it was creeping into early afternoon.

“No, no, really, I’d be happy to stay longer, trust me,” Nicole said quickly. “It’s just that the sun’s been going down so early, I don’t want to get caught in the dark if it takes too long.”

“No, you’re probably right. I forgot how much sooner it gets dark up here. We get a little more light down south. But you’re right. We can go now.”

“Does this place sell coffee to-go? If you still don’t have power, it’s going to be pretty cold.”

“Good thinking,” Waverly agreed, remembering the chill of the house from earlier. “Will that help pay down my coffee debt?”

Nicole’s cocky smile reappeared.

“Well, it would be a start, anyway.”


	4. But the Prettiest Sight to See Is the Holly That Will Be On Your Own Front Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seasons Greetings and Happy Solstice! I'm still not feeling super festive, but this was written when I was, so I think we're safe. It's time for them to head to the Homestead and maybe have a few misadventures in the process. But more importantly, they're spending time together and getting to know each other. It's fun to do their dynamic in this one. I'm enjoying Stubborn!Waverly and PathologicallyHelpful!Nicole a lot. I hope you guys have fun with this one!

* * *

With some reluctance, they shrugged back on their coats, placed their final coffee orders, and prepared to brave the great outdoors.

“You can follow me if you want,” Waverly said, pulling her gloves back on. “I’m in my uncle’s truck, that beat-up blue pickup in the hardware store lot.”

Nicole nodded as she pulled her cap on over her hair.

“I think I know the way, but I’ll follow you just in case.”

Shorty slid them each a paper cup of coffee and bid them good luck. As they left the bar, Waverly shivered in the icy air. While they had been inside, the snow had picked up, and bright flakes fluttered down in flurries. When they reached the lot, Waverly indicated the blue truck, and Nicole nodded as she swung into her patrol car.

Waverly’s radio screamed Christmas music as she drove off towards the Homestead. _Candles burnin’ low… Lots of mistletoe… Lots of snow and ice… Everywhere we go…_

It was a little jarring to have a cop car following so close at her heels, but she reassured herself with the thought that Nicole was off-duty today. For the moment, she was just Nicole, not Officer Haught.

They both pulled up to the Homestead, tires crunching on gravel. Waverly parked first and was standing nearby, shivering, as Nicole exited the car.

“Wow, you must _really_ like Christmas music,” the redhead said. She had some kind of notepad in her hand and was scribbling something. “I could hear it all the way in my car.”

Waverly blushed slightly and gestured towards the truck.

“It’s the radio. It’s broken. Uncle Curtis says it’s either that or else listening to the engine make some not-so-great noises.”

Nicole made a hum of acknowledgement and seemed to squint at the truck’s license plate for a moment before returning to her notepad.

“You were going a little fast for the road conditions, too.”

Waverly narrowed her eyes on her.

_She can’t be._

“Are you… writing a ticket?”

Nicole glanced up, only the slightest hint of a mischievous smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Well, you _were_ speeding, and it’s unlawful to have your music playing that lou—”

Waverly, indignant and with no other outlet for her anger, scooped up a hunk of snow and hurled it at the cop, only realizing the moment she did it what a terrible idea that was. Would that technically count as ‘assaulting an officer of the law?’ So much for her clean record. She’d probably have to spend the night in lockup, and Wynonna would die laughing.

Luckily, what the snowball made up for with power, it lacked in aiming, and Nicole was able to block it with her forearm, laughing as it broke apart on impact and dusted her with white powder.

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” she said quickly, turning the notepad around to show that it was blank. “I’m not even on duty.”

“Hilarious,” Waverly grumbled as Nicole tossed the notepad back into the car. Then the _off-duty_ cop joined her, surveying the Homestead.

“You know, it doesn’t look as bad as I’d imagined,” Nicole said charitably. Waverly eyed her sideways.

“I thought you said you’d seen it before.”

“Just in passing, driving by. I never stopped for a good look.”

Waverly crossed her arms and sighed, taking in the broken porch and, just beyond it, the broken door.

“Well, my family lived in it when I was a kid. It’s not like it’s been vacant since the thirties or anything. It _was_ okay at the time.”

Nicole didn’t argue with her.

“Do you have tools here, or do I need to grab some from home?” she asked instead.

“I brought my uncle’s toolbox. I don’t know how… _comprehensive_ it is, though.” She gestured to the side of the house, where said toolbox was still positioned under the loose window.

“Were you trying to fix that window?” Nicole asked, sounding confused. Waverly sighed.

“No… I needed to step on it to get through the window. It’s kinda high up.”

She was suddenly even more aware of their height difference, Nicole standing easily a head taller than her.

“Okay…” Nicole surveyed the window. “You’d better go through first then,” she advised. Waverly’s spirit plummeted. She had _really_ hoped to get away with Nicole _not_ watching her awkwardly clamber through the window.

“Why me?” Waverly said, her voice almost a whine.

“So that after you go through, I can pass the toolbox in to you. I think I can get up without it.” She sounded reasonably confident, and even worse, it made sense.

“Oh.” Well, so much for hoping she could avoid the embarrassment of climbing through the window with an audience. “Right. But what if you can’t?”

Nicole just stood a little taller, drawing herself up to her full height as though making a point of it.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m sure I can handle a window.”

“Okay. Great.” Waverly approached the window, already dreading the next few seconds. She glanced back at Nicole, who was (of course) watching her. “Um… could you just…” Waverly gestured, flustered, out towards the landscape, and mimed covering her eyes. Nicole, confused, mimicked the gestures, then seemed to realize what she meant.

“Oh! Yeah, sure.” She took a step or two away and looked out towards the barn, obediently turning her back to Waverly and the window.

Thank goodness for small favors.

Waverly stepped up onto the toolbox, her boots wet and slippery with snow, and tried to clamber through the window for the second time that day. Which went fine… until she was about halfway through… at which point, something on her clothes seemed to snag on the window frame and she found herself horribly, irreparably stuck.

For several seconds, she just wished that the house would do her the favor of collapsing into a sinkhole. When it didn’t, she had to resort to Plan B.

“Um… Nicole?” Waverly called.

“Yeah?” she heard from behind her, although it sounded like Nicole was still facing away.

“A little help?”

“Huh? Oh! Woah, hold still.”

“Not going anywhere.”

“Here, I think you’ve got a belt loop snagged on a nail. Let me just…” She felt Nicole’s hands on her middle, one holding her steady, the other unhooking her from the window’s clutches. Nicole had removed her gloves for better dexterity, and her hands felt hot as they grazed her midriff in the process. It was suddenly _very_ hard to remember how to breathe. “Okay, I think you’re free. But hold onto my arm.”

She grabbed hold of Nicole’s offered forearm and felt a push on her knee, which, combined with her continued clambering, had her falling into the house. Only this time, she had Nicole’s arm to stabilize her, and she managed to land upright, instead of in a pile of limbs on the floor.

“You okay?” Nicole asked.

“Yeah,” Waverly answered, straightening her back and making sure her feet were planted firmly.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Finally, she loosened her grip on Nicole’s forearm. It was steady as a rock, and Waverly wondered if it was her hobby of home repair that had made it so strong.

“Okay, I’m passing the toolbox through.” Nicole pushed their improvised step-stool through the window, and Waverly set it down to one side with a metallic _clank_. “Alright, keep back a little. It’s my turn.”

After Waverly’s own graceless entry, it was especially demoralizing to watch Nicole hop up and nimbly swing herself through window as though it were a routine part of her daily commute.

“Okay, so, front door, right?” Nicole said, landing easily on her feet. Waverly stared at her for a moment as she started walking towards the front of the house. Shaking her head a little, Waverly grabbed up the toolbox and followed.

“How did you make that look so easy?” she demanded. Nicole’s smile widened, and Waverly detected a hint of smugness in her expression.

“Oh, it’s probably easier because I’m taller. And I’m really into rock climbing, so that sort of thing— pulling myself up with awkwardly placed handholds at weird angles— is actually pretty normal.”

Waverly held back a disconsolate sigh. Rock climbing. Of course.

“Besides, it beats having to come down the chimney, right?” Nicole added, and Waverly breathed a reluctant laugh.

They reached the front door, and Nicole knelt down to look at the loose handle. She jiggled it experimentally.

“Yeah, it’s definitely off the spindle. If we can take it off from this side, we should be able to replace it easy enough. Could you bring the toolbox over?”

Nicole rummaged for the right sized screwdriver and started unscrewing the knob from the door, which seemed straightforward enough, so Waverly set herself to the task of building up a fire in the wood stove. It was still warm, but it had smoldered out while she was gone, so she stuck another log inside. She was out of kindling, so she went on a quick raid of the house. She didn’t find any newspaper, but she did find an empty bottle of scotch with a little amber puddle still at the bottom.

“Well, flammable is flammable,” she said to herself, taking it and shaking out the last bit over the still-warm logs in the stove. Nicole looked up and saw her mid-process and froze in place.

“Um… is that safe?” she asked, a little line of worry appearing between her eyes.

Waverly struck a match to it and it went up with a _whoof_.

“I know my parents used to do it sometimes,” she said, then paused to reconsider. “So… probably no.”

She closed the door of the stove, and Nicole uneasily turned her attention back to the door handle.

“We can probably scrounge up some kindling after this,” Nicole said.

“There’s probably something in the barn. Straw or something,” Waverly said. “I haven’t checked out there yet. Or upstairs.” She glanced back towards the stairway. “I’m not sure I trust those stairs.”

“Has the rest of the house had structural damage?” Nicole asked. “Termites? Carpenter ants? The foundation settling? The roof leaking?”

Waverly shook her head, nearly shivering at the mere mention of such things.

“No. God, nothing like that.”

“Then there shouldn’t be any reason why the stairs wouldn’t be safe,” Nicole assured her.

“Even though the porch steps were all rotted through?”

“Well, the porch has spent the last twenty years or whatever getting rained and snowed on, and maybe had animals and bugs living under it. And who knows if they even had the right treatment on wood to start with. Even if the house had been occupied, you might need to replace the porch by now.”

Nicole got the inside handle off, then did something with the screwdriver that made the outside handle turn and the door swing open. Waverly felt a welcome rush of relief at the sight.

“There,” Nicole said, satisfied. “That’s more like it.”

Waverly kept watching as Nicole replaced the door handle, occasionally pausing to show her what she was doing. Most of the words didn’t mean very much to Waverly, but she tried to pay attention to the mechanisms that Nicole showed her.

It was still cold in the house, and having the door open didn’t help. Waverly crouched beside the stove, shivering under her old coat. Nicole seemed to notice.

“Are you cold?” she asked, as Waverly chafed her arms, trying to keep her blood flowing.

“Always,” Waverly admitted.

“Well, if you’re used to Arizona, I’m sure this is a hell of an adjustment.”

“Yeah,” Waverly agreed. “But it’s not just that. I always get cold easy. When I lived here, I’d have to get under all these blankets at night just to sleep.”

“I think I have something in the car. Let me go grab it.”

“I’m okay. It’ll be okay once the stove warms up.”

“Maybe, but with all the cold air blowing in, that might take awhile. Just give me a second.”

Waverly wasn’t eager to put up more than a token argument, so she just showed Nicole the safer parts of the porch. The redhead jogged out to her patrol car and returned with a wonderfully heavy knit blanket in a red tartan pattern.

“Here. I always keep one in the trunk, just in case.” She handed it over, and Waverly drew it gratefully around her shoulders.

“In case of freezing home repair?” Waverly asked. The fabric was still cold from the car, but it was quick to warm, and Waverly felt herself relaxing as the worst of the chill faded.

“More like in case of damsels in distress.” Nicole’s smile took on that flirty edge again, but then she seemed to reel it back in. Her eyes were still warm and shining, but her smile leaned back towards friendly rather than flirtatious. “Or in case the car breaks down in the snow or the road freezes over.”

“Well, either way, I guess I’m lucky. Thanks,” she murmured. She would probably owe Nicole _another_ coffee for this. “Once they get the boiler back on, it won’t be so bad.”

Nicole, unpacking the parts to the new door handle, made a vague noise of agreement.

“Yeah, and you might have some spots in the walls that could use patching. And covering the windows would definitely help. But even then, this place doesn’t look like it’s exactly lousy with insulation.”

“No, it was always cold, even when I was a kid,” Waverly admitted. “Just not _quite_ this bad.” She watched Nicole for a moment, as she inspected the new doorknob and deadbolt. Her gloves were still sticking out of her coat pocket, her hands bare to the elements. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Not really. I actually kind of like the cold.”

“Well, you came to the right place,” Waverly said dryly, and Nicole grinned at her.

“I know. It can get to be a little much, even for me, but I like it better than the heat. It feels… I don’t know, clean somehow. Fresh. It gives me more energy. When it’s July and hot and humid, I feel like I’m being suffocated. Besides, what is it they say? There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing?”

“And you believe that?” Waverly asked. “Because I grew up around here, and I can tell you, there _is_ such a thing as bad weather.”

Nicole’s smile softened a bit.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said. She lifted the new door handle. “Do you want to do the honors, or should I?”

Waverly eyed it curiously.

“I can give it a try,” she said, somewhat reluctantly leaving the tepid warmth of the stove behind. “It didn’t look that hard online.”

Nicole rose out of her crouch and they both swapped places, Waverly by the door and Nicole warming her hands by the stove.

“I’ve learned over the past few months that a lot of things _look_ easy online, but aren’t in real life,” Nicole said wryly. “But replacing a doorknob isn’t one of them. I have faith in you.”

Waverly rolled her eyes slightly, looking over the instructions that came with the parts. It didn’t look _that_ complicated. She picked up the screwdriver and set to work.

While she worked, Nicole apparently set herself to stoking up the fire.

“You’re probably going to go through that firewood pretty quick,” she said.

“There might be more in the barn,” Waverly said, trying to picture it in her mind. She was pretty sure they had stored extra firewood in there. She remembered hiding behind the piles of it during games of hide and seek.

“Well, let me know if you need more,” Nicole said. “I can bring some over.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Oh trust me, it’s no trouble. I’m drowning in the stuff. I actually kinda enjoy chopping wood, and when I first took over the house, there were some trees that needed to be taken down, so some of the branches they didn’t haul away got turned into firewood. I could build a log cabin out of the stuff.” She looked at the wood stacked to the side as though measuring it in her mind.

“Well, I probably won’t be here that long,” Waverly said, and for the first time felt a little disappointed at the thought. “I mean, depending on how long it takes me to fix everything or find a contractor who _isn’t afraid of ghosts_.” She said the last part in an annoyed growl.

“Well, if it helps, it doesn’t feel very haunted in here to me,” Nicole said, looking around the room.

Waverly let out a long breath, which steamed in the air. The Homestead was haunted, alright, but only to her and Wynonna. The ghosts that lived there didn’t rattle chains or slam doors, they were just memories of an abusive father and an absent mother, an eldest sister who treated her like an unwanted pet, and a town that treated their family home like some kind of leper colony.

“Well, tell that to _Pete_. And _Kyle_. And every other contractor in town.”

Nicole looked thoughtful, like she was taking it as a real suggestion.

“You know, maybe I will.”

* * *

The doorknob did finally get attached, and as the door closed behind her and Nicole, Waverly felt a surge of pride that outranked anything she’d done in at least the past year. Although they _were_ still left standing on her highly unstable front porch.

“I can bring by a sheet of plywood or something, just so it’s stable enough to walk on,” Nicole offered, looking a bit dubiously down at the creaking boards under their feet.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m not using it for anything. My uncle’s house has this big greenhouse on the property, which my grandma was apparently just using for storage, so right now it’s just full of two-by-fours and plywood and broken furniture and stuff. So if you need anything, just say the word.”

“Thanks,” Waverly said. “And thanks for coming out here and helping. You really didn’t have to.”

“I told you, I go stir-crazy on my days off. If I hadn’t been here, I’d have been at home rehanging all my doors and talking out loud to my cat,” Nicole chuckled. “Besides, it’s been fun.”

“Yeah.” It kind of had. It had been cold, and occasionally a little frustrating, but Waverly was a little sad that it was over already. Her nebulous plan to fix the Homestead felt a lot less intimidating with Nicole there with her.

“Well, if you need any more help, you know where to find me. My house is about a kilometer down that way.” Nicole gestured down the road with a gloved hand. Waverly vaguely remembered a house being out that way, although she couldn’t remember if she had ever known the people who had lived there.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“And, uh… here.” Nicole pulled what looked like a business card out of her pocket and held it out. “My personal number’s on the back. If you need anything… or if you just want some company, feel free to call.”

The card was warm from her pocket and slightly crinkled, and sure enough, a phone number was hand-written on the back in neat, bold print. Waverly just stared at it for a moment, feeling a tiny thrill.

_Nicole Haught_

“Okay. Thanks.” She looked up into Nicole’s face and gave a slightly shy smile, still holding the card in both hands.

And with that, Nicole tucked her thumbs into her pocket and backed away, dismounting the porch to avoid the rotting steps.

“I mean it,” she added over her shoulder as she pulled her keys from her pocket.

Waverly watched as she departed in her patrol car, then looked back down at the card, wondering a bit at the twisting feeling in her chest.

* * *

Waverly tried to find something else to do in the Homestead after Nicole departed, but her thoughts were scattered, and Nicole was right about it getting harder to work as the sun sank down. As evening approached, the daylight dimmed until she could barely see in the Homestead’s dingy interior.

When she finally gave up and stepped outside, it was brighter, the snow catching the light and reflecting it back up. She had forgotten how pretty it was when it did that, how bright the nights could be, with light shining up from below and a cold, dark sky full of stars above. Even though it was freezing, Waverly stood outside for a little longer as the sun set over the mountains.

Finally, she climbed back into her uncle’s truck and set off back towards town. The radio serenaded her with _Christmas Tree Farm_ at an outrageous volume. She remembered Nicole’s threat of a fake ticket and caught herself biting back a smile.

When she pulled up to her aunt and uncle’s house, lit up by lights and promising warmth, Gus stepped out onto the porch to greet her.

“Good lord, girl, where have you been all day?”

“The Homestead. And the hardware store. And Shorty’s. And then the Homestead again,” she said tiredly.

“Well get inside and warm up. I was just about to start dinner.” Gus chafed Waverly’s arms, as if to warm her, then ushered her through the door. It was blessedly warm inside, and Waverly gratefully shedded her layers of borrowed clothing, hanging them in the hall closet before following Gus into the kitchen, where she was just turning the stove on under a pot. “So how bad is it?” Gus asked her, taking out a spoon and stirring the pot’s contents.

“The Homestead?” Waverly asked, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table. “It’s a mess.”

“Do you know what it’ll cost to fix it?”

Waverly shook her head.

“I can’t even get anyone to come out there to look at it.”

“Did you call up those York boys? They have a construction business in town, and they seem like nice boys. Or _men_ , I suppose, now.”

“Kyle told me he wouldn’t come out to the Homestead. Or, the ‘Murder House,’ as he called it. That stupid local superstition.” She could feel the anger roil under her skin again.

“Well then what in heaven’s name were you doing there all day?” asked Gus, still stirring.

“I was _fixing_ it,” Waverly huffed. Gus shot her an odd look.

“What the heck do you mean, _fixing it_?”

“The front door was broken. I replaced the handle.”

“By yourself?”

“It’s not that hard,” she said defensively. “But no, Nicole helped me.” At Gus’s blank look, she clarified, “Nicole Haught, the new police officer.”

“That ‘ginger Amazon’ you were so mad at yesterday?” Gus asked, and Waverly had to push back a blush at the memory.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I ran into her at the hardware store and apologized for snapping at her yesterday, and she offered to help me out with the Homestead.”

“Well that’s awful decent of her.”

“Yeah, she actually seems really nice.”

She watched as Gus tipped the contents of the pot into a mug— snowman-shaped this time— and stirred.

“I’m sure you can replace a door handle, maybe patch a wall here or there, but honey, that house needs help you can’t give it. Who knows what kind of shape it’s in after all these years. There could be electrical problems, a bad roof, rotten floors— your daddy sure never took care of it in his day, and houses don’t exactly age like wine.”

“I know,” Waverly said. “But I’ve got to do _something_ until I can find someone willing to work on it. Nicole says as long as I’m making a good faith effort, the town won’t come knock it down.”

“Well, do what you have to do, but remember to keep your options open. Letting the town pay you for the land might still be worth thinking about. Now drink up.” Gus set a mug in front of her. Cocoa again. Waverly rubbed the bridge of her nose, feeling her frustration build.

“Gus, I told you yesterday, I’m vegan.”

Waverly felt a dishtowel whap against her shoulder, startling her.

“I know that. It’s with almond milk.”

Waverly’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and she bowed her head over it, breathing in the steam.

Gus was telling the truth— she could smell the faint nuttiness of it.

“Sorry, I just thought… Thanks, Gus.”

She pulled it towards her and took a sip. It was sweet, and almost sickeningly rich. It made her think of winter, and snow, and Christmas, and home.

“I knew you had mentioned it before,” Gus said. “The vegan thing, I mean. Months ago. I just didn’t know it’d stuck. You hadn’t mentioned it in awhile.”

That was true, too. It wasn’t the kind of thing that came up a lot in phone calls. It made sense that Gus might have taken it for just a phase.

“It stuck,” Waverly assured her.

“Well okay then.”

Dinner was simple, but it _was_ free of animal products. Curtis didn’t bat an eye— he was a vegetable lover at heart and would never turn away a seasonal salad.

Afterwards, Waverly curled in an armchair in the living room, in front of a roaring fire. That was another thing she had missed while she was in Arizona— there weren’t nearly as many opportunities to sit around warm fires.

Curtis was watching the local news on mute, and she could hear Gus cleaning up in the kitchen. In her lap, Waverly cradled a photo album she had borrowed from the bookshelf. It was one she had looked at all the time as a kid, mostly because it had a lot of pictures of her mother in it, and of Gus when she was younger. She had always loved flipping through the old photos, imagining her mother as a young woman, full of life and passion. A rodeo rider. A loving sister.

Before she was a battered wife. Before she was a mother. Before she ran away. And now… who even knew where she was now…

She wondered if Gus missed her sister the way Waverly missed Wynonna. They never talked about those kinds of things…

She woke up in the chair sometime later. The fireplace was empty and steaming, and Uncle Curtis was gently shaking her shoulder.

“Time for bed, kiddo. I’ll put this back.” He gently took the album from where she’d been hugging it to her chest. She yawned, and he kissed the top of her head. “Goodnight now.”

“Goodnight,” she mumbled. She climbed to her feet, stumbled back to her room, and fell into her bed and all its warm blankets.


	5. Blue Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, welcome to 2021! I took a little break for the holidays (and also was posting [a very different Christmas one-shot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28296402/chapters/69337221): a slightly angsty canon-compliant imagining of Nicole and Rachel's lonely S4 Christmas). But here we are again with another chapter! And not to taunt you all, but _next_ chapter we'll start to get some really nice payoff, so I hope you stick around. Your kudos and comments are all a delight, and they help more than you can possibly imagine, so thank you for them. Enjoy the show!

* * *

Waverly slept in late the next day, luxuriating in the dark morning and the fact that she didn’t have to bow to the demands of her work schedule. Canadian mornings were icy, but as long as she was buried under all the bed’s extra blankets, she was comfortably snug. As much as she hated the cold, there was something nice about waking up under the blankets’ cozy weight. The contrast of the chill air made the warm blankets feel extra sweet.

When she finally did roll out of bed and sneak into the kitchen, there was a note from Gus on the counter.

_At the bar all morning.  
_ _Curtis is out repairing some fence.  
_ _He says you can use the truck again,  
_ _he’ll get a ride with Champ.  
_ _Call if you need anything.  
_ _Help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen.  
_ _-Gus_

On that recommendation, Waverly made herself a cup of tea (which, for all she knew, was still left over from the last time she’d visited, years ago). It was snowing again, and Waverly sat in the window, an afghan around her shoulders, cradling the mug against her chest and watching the flurries swirl in the wind.

She would miss this, when she went back to the Southwest— the way the snow moved in tumbling flakes and clouds of powder— the way she could watch it from safely behind a window, sipping a warm drink under a blanket. It was nice.

When she ran out of both tea and excuses not to leave, she bundled herself back up in her borrowed outerwear and headed back out to the Homestead. The snow had stopped by then, but the town looked refreshed by it, as though every inch of it had been scrubbed clean. A light dusting of powder lay over everything, gleaming white in the sun.

The truck blasted _Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree_ at full volume as she drove it out of town.

_You will get a sentimental feeling… when you hear…_

As she pulled up to the Homestead, the first thing she noticed was a thick sheet of plywood on the porch, which decidedly _hadn’t_ been there yesterday. She looked around instinctively, but Nicole didn’t seem to be there, nor did her patrol car. She must have stopped by late the night before or early that morning and left the plywood there for her. It was a sweet gesture, if _plywood_ could ever be considered a sweet gesture.

She climbed up onto the porch and felt reassured by the extra support under her feet. They may still have to repair the porch eventually, but until then, it would be nice to worry a little less about falling through it. With everything they had to deal with, even a _temporary_ solution felt like a win.

And speaking of solutions…

Waverly eyed the shiny new lock on the front door. It looked the same as when they’d left it, which seemed like a good sign. She pulled out her new key, took a deep breath, and pushed it into the lock. She had been dreading another metallic scraping sound, or the key jamming, or it not fitting in at all, but instead it slid in with the softest of clicks, and the door swung open under her hand.

She felt a disproportionate glow of pride, and a small squeal of victory escaped her. There was still a lot left to do, and a lot left to fix, but at least this one first repair had gone according to plan. That _had_ to be a good omen.

Waverly didn’t plan to _repair_ anything else today. Not yet. Today would just be some surface cleaning and inventorying. Maybe if the power came back on, she would think about it, but until then, it was too cold and too dark in the house’s interior to accomplish much.

Shivering already, she started by stoking up the wood stove. She had remembered to grab Curtis’s old newspapers before she left, and she stuffed the belly of it with logs and paper before setting off to work, already feeling warmer.

Most of the furniture had been covered by drop cloths when it was abandoned, and they erupted in clouds of dust as she pulled them off. Underneath were all the old pieces that had been the backdrop to her childhood. Her father’s chair. Her sister’s desk. Their kitchen table. Most of them she hadn’t thought about in years, but seeing them again stirred faint memories. She took the dust covers outside and shook them out, leaving them in a pile on the porch, along with any furniture or miscellania that seemed too broken to save.

The majority of the wooden furniture was in decent shape— or at least what damage it _did_ have looked like it was probably from when they had lived there, not from its time abandoned. Three small children could be rough on a house, and a drunk, violent father didn’t help matters. It was probably lucky that _anything_ was still salvageable from their time in the house.

It looked a lot less creepy with the furniture uncovered— more like a house and less like a crime scene. Still, the furnishings were sparse. If she wanted the house set up for living, she would need to buy some things. More seating. Beds. Some colorful blankets and throw pillows, maybe. Some decorations for the wall. That would go a long way to brightening up the place.

Not that she planned to live there. Not anytime soon, anyway. She just wanted it as an _option_ , that was all. There was no harm in that.

She didn’t quite feel emotionally prepared to look too closely at anything yet, so she set herself to the task of just surface cleaning— sweeping up the copious dust and a quite distressing number of desiccated husks from long-deceased bugs; wiping the filthy windows clear; rubbing at old and new water stains; knocking cobwebs down from the corners and crannies of each room.

By mid-day, she was already worn-out and cold and thirsty, and her clothes had picked up a layer of dust and grime. She left the cleaning supplies on the Homestead floor and mercifully drove herself back to her uncle’s house for a much-needed shower and change of clothes.

Gus and Curtis were still out, and Waverly suspected she knew where they were, so her next stop, fittingly, was Shorty’s Saloon. The drive involved passing the police station, and she caught herself slowing as she drove by, searching for a glimpse of a red braid and navy uniform against the white snow. She didn’t see any.

Shaking her head at herself, she continued on, pulling into a parking space outside the saloon and rushing inside to escape the cold.

She had missed this bar, with its old Western decorations and the pictures of Wyatt Earp on the walls. There were similar ones around Tombstone, ones that fashioned themselves like old Western saloons, but none that had the same energy that Shorty’s did. There was an authenticity to it, an eclectic spin to the decor, that just couldn’t be replicated. More importantly, she _knew_ Shorty’s. She knew every inch of it— the stain on the pool table from the infamous New Years party, the chip on the counter from a drunken brawl following the town’s one hockey victory, the dent in the trash can from where Champ had tried to re-enact a certain barrel-riding incident that nearly got him banned from the bar for a month (until he whined his way out of it and had her vouch for his sincerity).

The bar was at much a home to her as the Homestead was, and even as much as her aunt and uncle’s house was.

She spotted Curtis in his usual seat and climbed up next to him.

“Hey, kiddo,” he greeted her with a heavy hand on her shoulder. “How’s the old Homestead?”

“Filthy,” she answered honestly. “There’s dust and spiderwebs everywhere. It’s like a giant Halloween decoration.”

“I’m not surprised,” he admitted. “I went out there once, a few years ago, just to look for something, and had a peek inside. Looked like something out of a ghost town.”

She sighed and folded her arms atop the counter, then lay her head down on them. She felt the heavy weight of her uncle’s arm drop across her back, patting her sympathetically.

“Do you really think it’s not worth saving?” she asked into her arms. Her uncle thought for a moment, sipping beer from his mug.

“I suppose that’s between you and your sister,” he said finally. “That house has an awful lot of bad memories locked up in those walls. It might feel like a kinda freedom to have it gone, and have something new there instead.” He cleared his throat. “But unlike your aunt, I can also imagine not wanting to give those ghosts the satisfaction. I can imagine wanting to chase them out instead. Take back what’s yours.”

Curtis had always understood her better than anyone in town. Gus had thrown up her hands at all her online history degrees and niche interests, but Curtis had supported her unconditionally. He knew what it was like to feel like an outsider. A _well-liked_ outsider, in both their cases, but an outsider nonetheless.

“I just… don’t like the idea of losing it,” Waverly murmured. “I mean, what if Wynonna wants to move back someday? Where else could she go? She deserves _one_ safe place to land, after everything.”

Curtis gave a soft grunt, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“Well, it sounds like you’ve made up your mind, and it ain’t my job to talk you out of it. If saving that old house is what you want, then you just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, alright?” Tears pricked at her eyes again. “Now chin up. It’ll all work out in the end.”

Waverly sniffled and made herself straighten up, just in time for a mug of coffee to appear in front of her.

“Everything alright?” Shorty asked. Waverly nodded, wiping at her face.

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

She pulled the mug towards her, the smell of it reminding her of her time with Nicole the day before, and the ever-growing number of coffees Waverly owed her. It was a warming thought.

The doors swung open, and a blur of navy caught the corner of Waverly’s eye, making her head turn instinctively. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Nicole— it was just Nedley. Of course it was Nedley— back in her bartending days, she had seen him in the bar every day, like clockwork. Now, as he saw her, he raised his eyebrows slightly and tipped his hat in greeting.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Waverly said, raising a hand in a half-wave.

“Curtis mentioned you’d be back for the holiday,” Nedley said conversationally. She nodded, returning her hand to the warm ceramic of the mug.

“Yeah, to deal with the old family property. Did you know it was being condemned?”

“I heard,” he admitted, not _quite_ managing to sound guilty about it. “Thought it might be for the best, after everything that happened there.”

“Apparently a lot of people _thought_ that,” Waverly said, a bite of annoyance creeping into her voice. She cleared her throat, changing the subject before she could get _too_ mad at him. “How’s Chrissy? I haven’t heard from her in awhile.”

Nedley gave a gesture to Shorty, who poured him a mug of black coffee and slid it across the counter. He contemplated the liquid briefly before answering.

“She’s good. She’ll be glad to hear you’re back in town.”

Waverly felt a homesick pang at the thought of seeing Chrissy again. They had been friends for as long as she could remember, and it had been weird to go so long without seeing her.

“Tell her I’d love to see her while I’m here. I’ve missed her.”

Nedley nodded, fiddling a bit with his Stetson.

“She’s missed you, I’d reckon. Ever since Stephanie Jones went and got married, I think she’s been feeling cooped up.”

Waverly’s jaw dropped.

“Stephanie Jones got married? To _who_?” She didn’t mean to sound as incredulous as she felt, but Stephanie Jones was the kind of backstabbing mean girl they made high school movies about, only she hadn’t stopped after high school. If anything, she was the kind of mean that only got sharper with age.

“Of all the strangest things I’ve seen in Purgatory, her making off with Bradley Brewer is one of the strangest,” Nedley admitted.

“No kidding…” She shook herself a little at the thought. Brad was such a nice guy, he really deserved better. “Nicole didn’t mention…” At the name, Nedley’s furry eyebrows knitted together, and Waverly caught herself. She attempted a winning smile. “Oh… I, uh, met your new deputy the other day. She seems nice.”

“‘Met’ wasn’t exactly the word she used for it,” Nedley said, and Waverly realized that Nicole had probably only told him about their first encounter. She winced a little.

“Right. We didn’t exactly get off on the best foot… but second time’s a charm! We’re getting along now. She seems really helpful.” She cleared her throat and drummed her fingers against her mug, attempting nonchalance. “So… how has she been working out for the force?”

“We’re lucky to have her,” Nedley said, a little more vaguely than Waverly had been angling for.

“Oh really?” she prompted, trying to pull his attention back from his coffee.

“Her first night on the job, she got called out here to a barfight,” Shorty added, chuckling. “Had kind of a deer in headlights look for about a second— you could tell everyone thought she was gonna be a pushover— but then she turns to me and asks me who started it. I point to Champ Hardy, and she just grabs him straight away and hauls him off to the drunk tank like a roped calf, saying that anyone who was still there when she got back would be joining him. Whole place cleared out in about ten seconds.” Shorty paused to laugh at the memory. “You should’ve seen Champ’s face when it happened.”

“I can imagine,” Waverly said, a bit dryly. Champ was a burly, fairly macho guy who wouldn’t have seen any humor in being dragged out of the bar like a sack of potatoes, especially by a girl.

“Champ Hardy— Now there’s someone who’ll be happy to see you back in town. He moped like a kicked puppy when you left,” Shorty told her, his voice low and confidential. Waverly rolled her eyes and didn’t bother to answer. She was still trying to conjure a mental image of Nicole dragging a drunken Champ out of the bar by his ear. It was an appealing image. She would have to ask her about it sometime.

* * *

After a leisurely mug of coffee and a meal that could have passed for either a late lunch or an early dinner, Waverly reluctantly returned to the chilly Homestead and set herself back to the task of cleaning. She regretted not thinking to bring a radio or something (although until they turned the electricity back on, there wouldn’t be much of a point).

Just as the sun was just beginning to drop down over the mountains and she was carrying yet another dustpan full of dust and dead spiders outside, she heard a crunch of tires on snow and spotted a police cruiser pulling up to the Homestead. She paused on the porch and watched Nicole emerge from her car, her head and shoulders followed by two hands, both holding to-go cups of coffee.

“Hey!” Nicole called up to her, walking towards the porch, a beaming smile on her face. She was back in uniform, a navy department-issue coat over a pair of khakis, with the French braid back in place and a pair of solid-looking boots on her feet. “Wasn’t sure if you’d still be out here, but I thought if you were… you’d probably be freezing.”

She handed up one of the cups, and Waverly accepted it from her hand. She could smell coffee and a hint of almond milk through the lid, and she gratefully cupped her hands around its warmth.

“You were right,” Waverly said. “But I’m the one who’s supposed to owe _you_ coffee, remember?”

“Well, I’ll add another to your invoice,” Nicole said mock-seriously. Waverly smiled.

“I probably owe you a few dozen by now. Did you bring this plywood over last night?” She gently kicked her heel against the sheet of plywood under her feet. Standing on the porch with Nicole on the ground, she got to enjoy the novelty of being taller than her for a change.

“No, I thought it would be too dark to see what I was doing, so I brought it over this morning. When I saw that I had a sheet the right size, it seemed like destiny.”

“Well, thank you. It’s made today a lot easier, not having to worry about falling through the porch.”

“Of course. Anytime.” Nicole smiled up at her, breathing clouds into the icy air. “Did you end up getting a lot done?”

“Not really. Just cleaning, mostly. There’s dust _everywhere_ , and _bugs_. I’m afraid to start opening drawers and cupboards because god knows what’s been living in them.”

“Yeah, you might want to brace yourself for a few dead mice,” Nicole said, wrinkling her nose a little. It made her face _distractingly_ cute. “Speaking from experience, unfortunately. Is there anything I can help with?”

Waverly shook her head.

“It’s about to get too dark to do anything else.” Which was a relief, but also carried just a hint of disappointment, now that Nicole was back. The cleaning would probably pass a lot quicker with someone to talk to.

“Still no power?”

“Nope.”

“That’s too bad.”

Waverly shrugged.

“Kinda. But hopefully they’ll get around to it soon.” Waverly sighed, eyes drifting up to the darkened porch light by the door. “So are you off tomorrow for the holiday?”

“Yeah. Off tomorrow and then working Christmas.”

Waverly frowned slightly, doing the math in her head.

“Oh. So you don’t get the holiday off?”

Nicole shook her head with a wry chuckle.

“Essential services. Someone’s got to be on call. I don’t really have any family around anymore, but Nedley has Chrissy, so I told him I’d take the Christmas shift.”

Waverly felt something in her chest soften yet another degree.

“That’s really nice of you.”

Nicole shrugged, but did seem a little cheered by the praise.

“I don’t mind, really. My family never celebrated it much anyway.”

“Still…” The wind picked up a little, and Waverly shuddered with the sudden chill, her hands tightening around the coffee cup. She thought she even saw Nicole shiver.

“Well, if you’re heading out, I won’t slow you down,” Nicole said, as the cold breeze sucked away a little of the moment’s warmth. “Call me tomorrow if you need a hand with anything, okay? And enjoy the coffee.”

She took a step back, away from the porch, but Waverly stopped her with a quick, “Wait.”

“Yeah?” Nicole asked, pausing mid-step on the way to her car. Waverly tilted her head a little.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?” she asked curiously.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you didn’t know if I’d still be here, but you brought two coffees.”

Nicole ducked her head for just a moment, as if to hide her sheepish smile.

“Ah, that. Well, I’d have had to just drink both of them then. So I’m lucky you were here, or I’d have been up all night.” She took a step back as the wind ruffled her clothes and pulled loose strands from her braid. “Goodnight, Waverly Earp.”

Waverly raised a hand in a tiny wave goodbye, the other raising the cup to her lips for a sip. It tasted… sweet… and warm. And the feeling lingered as Nicole drove away into the setting sun.


	6. I Just Want You For My Own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never planned for there to be quite such a gap between chapters, but gosh, who knew 2021 would have such a crazy start! It's been hard to find enough time between crises to finish chapters. But I do want to get this fic completed, preferably while it's still solidly winter. So apologies for the break, and I hope the next one will come faster!
> 
> This chapter has two things that I love and that I think the fandom as a whole loves: Chrissy Nedley, and a scene of Nicole Haught chopping wood. It's a good time. I hope you all like it, and if you do and you leave a kudos and/or comment, I will be such a happy camper. You're also welcome to [follow me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Absolute_Hammer) if you are so inclined. Now, without further ado, please enjoy the fic!

* * *

The next morning, Christmas Eve, Waverly woke up and started to get out of bed, but the chill in the air brought her back, shivering, under the covers. She decided to work herself up to the whole ordeal, and instead took the opportunity to call her sister again. She settled herself into a comfortable blanket cocoon and propped her phone up against a pillow as it rang.

“Heya, Waves.” Wynonna appeared on her screen, awake and dressed this time— which made sense, since it was now late afternoon or early evening in Greece, and not six in the morning. She seemed to be sprawled on a threadbare couch, and a television or radio chattered faintly in the background. “What’s up? How’s the Homestead?”

“Ughhhh,” Waverly groaned dramatically into the mattress. “Falling apart.”

She pictured the broken porch, the rusting appliances, the chill of the winter air through its thin walls and leaky windows. It would take so much work to make it liveable again, let alone to make it comfortable enough to maybe tempt Wynonna back someday.

“Did they say how much it would cost to fix it?” her sister asked. Waverly huffed in response.

“No, because _nobody’s_ willing to work on it.” She mentally cursed the York brothers again, while Wynonna frowned into the camera, her eyebrows lowering in confusion.

“What? Why not? It can’t be _that_ bad, can it? I mean, it was a piece of shit when we lived there, but I remember it having four walls and a roof.”

“It’s not that. It’s… the ‘murder house’ thing.” She didn’t like to use that particular term with Wynonna, but it was too early in the morning to think up a more diplomatic phrasing. She saw a shadow pass over her sister’s face.

“That fucking town…” Wynonna growled. “So now what? They just tear it down?”

“I… don’t know yet. I’m trying to fix what I can, but I don’t really know what I’m doing, and even with Nicole helping, there’s only two of us. I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

“Nicole… Nicole who?” Wynonna’s face was screwed up like she was racking her brain for high school acquaintances.

“Oh, uh... she’s... new in town,” Waverly said, feeling oddly reluctant to admit to the full story. But at Wynonna’s questioning gaze, she gave in. “Okay, fine, she’s that cop I yelled at the other day.”

“The hot cop?” Wynonna said, and Waverly felt her face heating up.

“No. I mean, _yes_ , but that’s just her name. But she’s actually really nice. She inherited the old Rayleigh place down the road, so she’s been fixing it up for months now, and she seems to know what she’s doing. She helped me change out the lock on the front door, and she put some plywood down over the porch... which doesn’t sound like much when I say it out loud, but it was actually really sweet.”

Wynonna was still looking at her through the phone camera like she could tell that hadn’t been the whole story.

“Sounds like she’s made an impression.”

“I guess,” Waverly said. “I mean, she’s been really friendly, and it’s been nice having someone who’s willing to come out there and help. She didn’t grow up here, so it’s just a normal old house to her, and she doesn’t know anything about our family. There’s none of that baggage that everyone else has with us.”

“Yeah, I guess I can see that,” Wynonna said slowly. “Well, I’m glad _someone_ out there is helping you. I don’t want you to have to do it all by yourself, you know? I feel kinda bad that this is all falling to you.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re like ten thousand miles away, it’s not like you can just pop over there to check on it.” Waverly hesitated, biting down on her lip at a sudden thought. “Unless… you _wanted_ to come back. To visit, or to see the place, or anything. I mean, once the place is fixed up a little, it might be kind of cool to see it again, don’t you think?” She tried not to sound too hopeful, but she didn’t think she succeeded.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Wynonna said evasively, turning her eyes away from the camera. “Listen, if you can keep it in one piece, great, but if it’s going to be a big pain in your ass, it’s okay if they have to tear it down. I don’t care.”

“Why am I the only one that _isn’t_ okay with them bulldozing our childhood home?!” Waverly half-shouted. Wynonna’s expression turned innocent and placating.

“Okay, okay, geez, nevermind. Save it if it makes you happy. I mean, great-great-grandpa Wyatt did build it, after all. That’s worth something, right?” She shrugged. “And if the hot cop is going to help you, I say take the help.”

Waverly sighed, slumping wearily into the mattress.

“I’m going to owe her a _lot_ of coffee when this is all over…”

* * *

A particularly energetic version of _Jingle Bells_ serenaded her as she drove her uncle’s truck back out to the Homestead. The drive out to the house and back had become her favorite part of the day. The truck’s heater was powerful enough to keep out the bitter cold, and she had even gotten used to the blasting radio. The back roads were almost always empty, and the snowy landscape was a balm to her busy mind. Clean and cold and white, spotted with dark trees and rolling mountains in the distance.

The first thing she did when she arrived was load up the cast iron stove again. She remembered Nicole’s comment that it had looked like she would need more firewood soon. Waverly hadn’t believed her at the time, but the stack had shrunk worryingly since then. She had underestimated how much it would take to keep the Homestead at a bearable temperature. She would have to check the barn to see if there was more there, or maybe take Nicole up on her offer to loan her some.

She wondered how many coffees she would owe Nicole in exchange for a cord of firewood. Probably a lot. But that wouldn’t be the worst fate in the world.

But it was probably worth at least _checking_ the barn first. So she hunkered down into her coat and, with a final, wistful glance at the toasty stove, went back outside and crossed the frosty ground, her legs leaving twin trenches in the snow.

The barn had been in rough shape even in her childhood, and it hadn’t aged well. There were splintered remains where the door had come loose from its hinges, and Waverly wished she’d thought to borrow her aunt’s shotgun before braving the interior. But outside of some evidence of mice and raccoons having taken up habitation at some earlier time, the inside was mostly just messy and empty. Old hay was strewn across the floor, along with some bits and pieces of old broken farm equipment that someone had probably once planned to fix. To her dismay, there wasn’t any firewood, but if she swept up the straw, it would at least make good kindling.

She turned to head back to the house for her broom, but just as she reached the door, she found somebody standing in it.

For a split-second, she panicked and doubly wished she’d brought that shotgun. Then for another split-second she wondered if it might just be Nicole. Then she blinked and realized who it actually was.

“Chrissy? Oh my God!”

There were twin squeals of excitement as Waverly rushed her with a hug of greeting.

“Hey! I can’t believe you came back after all this time!” Chrissy said as they separated and looked each other over for signs of change. Waverly gestured vaguely in the direction of the Homestead

“Yeah, well… I couldn’t just let them tear down my house.”

Chrissy followed her gesture, but didn’t seem to fully buy the explanation.

“I didn’t think you even liked this place. I mean, I guess I always thought of the McCreadys’ house as ‘your house,’ you know?”

Waverly wanted to explain herself, but wasn’t sure how to put to words the strange mix of feelings in her heart— the bad memories tangled with the good, but more importantly, the _potential_ for better. The thought of what it _could_ be, someday.

“Um… Yeah, I guess. But, I mean…” Waverly grasped for a simpler explanation. “Wyatt Earp himself built this house, right? It’s a historical landmark.”

Chrissy’s expression cleared a little.

“That’s right, you always _did_ care about that sort of thing. And, I mean, working in Tombstone and everything…” she trailed off, nodding. “I get it.” There was a slightly awkward silence, then Chrissy’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh! So I thought I’d come out and see you needed any help. Dad said you were trying to get the place cleaned up, but that sounds like a _huge_ job for one person. I thought you might like a hand.”

Waverly wondered if any of her so-called friends in Arizona would have offered such a thing, then put the thought out of her mind.

“That’s really sweet of you. I promise, I was going to call you while I was in town; I just got really caught up in all this.” She gestured vaguely to the barn, strewn with the debris of fifteen years of abandonment. “But since you’re here… I definitely won’t turn down the help.” The wind blew in through the open door and they both shivered. “But come inside first, it’s freezing out here.”

Linking arms, Waverly led her back to the house and showed her the safest way up onto the porch and to the front door. Chrissy looked at the plywood a little dubiously.

“Is that safe?” she asked.

“So far the porch has been okay. It’s just the stairs that have been the problem.” Waverly kicked her toe (gently) against the plywood. “This is just here until we can look at the porch more closely.”

“Who’s ‘we?’ Pete and Kyle?” Chrissy guessed, gingerly stepping up onto the plywood-covered porch.

“No. Right now, _they’re_ refusing to even come out here, let alone actually work on it.”

“Well, it’s hard to blame them. This place has a reputation; I wouldn’t want to be out here alone either.” Chrissy said it like it was so obvious, so objectively true, and Waverly felt her blood pressure rise.

“I _know_ all about its reputation,” she grumbled, leading the way through the front door via its shiny new doorknob.

“Oh. Right, sorry, I know you do.” Chrissy sounded honestly penitent, and Waverly felt her annoyance fade a little. She took a deep breath and tried to remind herself that Chrissy had been raised with the same stories as everyone else in town.

“But I know everyone finds it creepy, so… it’s nice of you to come out here anyway,” Waverly said finally. Chrissy offered a smile.

“Of course. You’re my best friend.”

The words hit Waverly right in the chest, warm and yet somehow painful.

“Even though I moved two thousand kilometers away?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Of course,” Chrissy said. “As long as you’re still my friend even though I haven’t been the best about calling or writing.”

“Of course you are,” Waverly said immediately. Chrissy beamed back at her.

“Well then… point me at a broom or something! Let’s get this creepy old house cleaned up!”

* * *

Cleaning the house with someone else turned out to be _infinitely_ better than cleaning it alone. Not just because many hands made light work, but because it made the house feel less empty (and, fine, she could admit it, less _creepy_ ).

“God, it’s so weird being in here,” Chrissy said, as she wiped down the kitchen counters. “It must be even weirder for you. You never really came back here after… after everything, did you?”

Waverly, crouched down and excavating the storage closet under the stairs, rocked back on her heels and raised her voice so it wouldn’t be muffled by the walls.

“Not really.” After her father and sister’s death, there had been so many bad memories tied up in the place, and she had been trying so hard to escape her family’s reputation that she hadn’t ever looked back. Very rarely, she had been out driving and caught herself driving past it, craning her neck to see what she could without stopping. But after moving to Arizona, she had barely ever given it a second thought.

But still, there had always been that imaginary future, where someday Wynonna decided to come back. And the Homestead was the only place they owned. Who else in the town would rent to her, or sell to her, given her reputation? Where else could she go?

“So what are you going to do if you save the place, anyway? Sell it?” Chrissy asked. “I mean, you’re not planning to move back, are you?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question, but one that Waverly just didn’t have a good answer for.

“Not right now,” she said, brushing dust off her hands. “But I don’t know… Maybe someday?”

Chrissy’s face appeared in the doorway as she leaned in from the other room. She looked surprised.

“Really? You think you’d come back?” she asked.

“I... “ Waverly hesitated, suddenly feeling like a spotlight had been pointed at her. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to have the _option_ , right? I mean, so that I could come back if I had to. If anything happened.”

That made it sound practical, like a safety net. After all, things could change. Jobs fell through. People moved. _Shit happens_ , as Wynonna always said.

“You mean like if your aunt or uncle got sick?” Chrissy asked. She said it like an innocent, reasonable question, but it stopped Waverly cold. She imagined Gus or Curtis falling ill or getting hurt— or even _dying_ — while she was two thousand kilometers away. When she hadn’t seen them for months, or even years. When she had missed so much. She shivered. “Knock on wood, of course,” Chrissy followed up quickly, rapping her knuckles against the wooden door frame.

“Yeah… Something like that…” Waverly frowned. She returned her attention to the closet, but was still troubled.

It was truly amazing how much _stuff_ had been left behind. It looked like only a handful of scattered boxes, but each one contained so much random _junk_. In one, there were a handful of bent nails and rusty screws, scraps of sandpaper, a long-dried bottle of wood glue, some scraps of PVC pipe, and an ancient-looking radio. Another contained old assorted cans of paint and some ancient paintbrushes stuffed into an old coffee can. And in yet another… she found a shoebox of broken crayons and a stack of a child’s drawings. Stunned, she pulled them out of the closet for a better look.

“Ooh, what did you find?” Chrissy said, glancing curiously at the box as Waverly carried it out.

“I think…” Waverly started, spreading the drawings out on the old kitchen table. She felt a smile tug at her face. “Aww… I think I drew these. I loved coloring when I was a kid. They must have gotten left behind when we moved out…”

They were crayon drawings. Some were just of the usual kid things— a pink horse standing on green grass under a smiling yellow sun, a snowman with a red scarf and a giant purple top hat— but there were others she recognized more specifically.

Three kids and a mom playing under a poplar tree.

A woman with a cowboy hat and boots riding a unicorn.

A smiling family all in a line, except for the angry dad and the one crying girl on the end.

A girl and her big sister playing in a big brown barn.

A frozen lake with a teddy bear stranded on the ice.

It was a testament to the paradox of her childhood— the happy moments with Mama or Wynonna up against the dread-filled ones with Willa and Daddy. The bad and the good all shuffled together in one big pile. She suddenly wished more than ever that Wynonna were there to talk to about her memories of the Homestead. She wished it were the two of them poring over the old pictures and sorting through the abandoned stuff of their childhood, joking back and forth. She wanted it so badly that she felt tears starting to well up.

“Aww, they’re sweet,” Chrissy cooed, interrupting Waverly’s thoughts as she surveyed the drawings. “You should keep them.”

Murmuring agreement and blinking away the sudden rush of emotion, Waverly carefully stacked them back up and tucked them back into the shoebox. She didn’t have a lot of keepsakes from that early in her life, and she could show these to Wynonna next time they talked. She moved the shoebox to the truck for safekeeping and returned her attention to the task at hand.

* * *

It was still only late morning when Waverly stopped to feed more wood into the hungry cast-iron stove. Even with the stove full of fire, most of the house was still like an icebox. It was tempting to just pull some chairs around the fire and hunker under blankets, but that didn’t seem like the greatest strategy for efficient house-cleaning.

“Is there more firewood?” Chrissy asked, eyeing the dwindling woodpile with concern and chafing her arms for warmth.

“I don’t think so. I’d really been hoping the power would be back on by now,” Waverly sighed. And yet, underneath her annoyance, there was also a tiny frisson of something brighter and more hopeful. She cleared her throat and attempted a casual tone. “But, uh… Nicole said that I could borrow some from her if I needed to…”

She tried to say it as offhandedly as possible, but Chrissy looked intrigued.

“Nicole… as in Nicole Haught? Dad’s new deputy?” she asked curiously.

“Yeah. She just lives down the road from here. She helped me out yesterday. You’ve met her, right?” Waverly tried to keep her tone casual and her face unblushing. There was no reason for it, after all. So what if Nicole was nice? And handy? And maybe just a little bit ridiculously gorgeous, if someone was into that kind of thing.

“Sure, a few times.” Chrissy shrugged. “I think Dad was trying to push the two of us together when she first started.”

Waverly pictured Nicole’s bright smile, the teasing glint in her eye, and imagined it directed at Chrissy instead of her. Something inside her twisted in protest.

“Push you together?” she prompted, requiring more information about this troubling development. Chrissy looked up at her and seemed to sense her concern.

“Oh, no, not like…” She blushed lightly. “I think he wants us to be friends, that’s all.”

The twisting feeling released.

“But you don’t want to be?” Waverly asked. Sure, just seconds ago, she had just been adamant that Nicole and Chrissy should _not_ be involved in anything beyond friendship, but there didn’t seem to be any reason why they shouldn’t be _friends_.

“It’s not that. She seems nice enough. It just makes me feel like I’m in kindergarten again, Dad telling me to go play with the other kids.” Chrissy still looked curious. “How do you two know each other?”

Waverly flashed back briefly to the jet-lagged fury of their initial meeting.

“Your dad didn’t mention anything?”

“Noooo…” Chrissy dragged the word out, with a note of amusement. “Why would he?”

“Nothing. We met in the station, when I was asking about the house being condemned. And, uh, then we ran into each other at Mr. James’s store and she offered to help me out a little, in exchange for some coffee.” She skipped over any shouting or glaring that might have coincided with their first meeting.

“Really?” Chrissy’s eyes narrowed a bit, and Waverly wondered how much she was guessing.

Maybe there was a downside to having been friends since they were kids; Chrissy could read her a little _too_ well. Waverly cleared her throat and put her hands firmly on her hips.

“Well, if we need the firewood, we need the firewood, right? Until the boiler comes back on, at least. So maybe we should go stop by and say hi. She said she was off work today.”

“Sure, if you want to.” Chrissy’s voice still had that undercurrent of amusement, like she was reading volumes into Waverly’s few sentences.

Waverly led them to the truck, on the argument that they could put the firewood in its bed.

Chrissy visibly jumped as the radio kicked on, a burst of sound coalescing into _Santa Claus is Coming to Town_.

“Can we turn that down?!” she half-shouted, trying to adjust the volume dial. If anything, it just seemed to get louder.

“Sorry! It’s broken!” Waverly shouted back, barely audible over the clash of music.

“What?!”

The two of them looked wordlessly at each other for a moment, the music drowning out any hope of communication, until they both dissolved into helpless laughter.

The drive to Nicole’s house was short— it really wasn’t that far down the road. Waverly had expected it to look like the Homestead, so was surprised by how different it was. The house was newer, and was a full two stories, unlike the Homestead’s scant one-and-a-half. Neatly fenced-off garden patches were arranged around the house, a pair of chicken coops hugged the side, and there was a big greenhouse in the distance, at the back of the property. Nicole’s patrol car was parked in front of the house.

There was an odd silence as Waverly turned the car off and the music cut out, disturbed only by a faint, distant _thwack_.

“Should I have called first?” Waverly asked, as they walked up to the door. They ascended her porch via the wooden steps (Waverly’s foot throbbed at the memory of attempting the same thing at the Homestead) and knocked on the door. In the seconds that they waited, Waverly felt the ridiculous urge to smooth out her hair and straighten her clothes. “I don’t have any dust on me, right?” she asked, suddenly worried. Chrissy looked like she was smothering a smile.

“No, you’re fine. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

But no one answered the door.

She rang the doorbell. Still no one came.

“Do you think she’s not here?” Waverly asked, frowning.

“I don’t know. Her car’s here. Maybe she’s somewhere on the property. We could check around,” Chrissy suggested.

“Yeah. I’ll go check back by the greenhouse. She said she keeps a lot of stuff in there. Maybe she’s working on something.”

Chrissy agreed, and Waverly set off. As she rounded the side of the house, the faint _thwack_ noise started up again. It echoed strangely off the trees that surrounded the property, but it sounded like it was coming from the greenhouse.

The sound got louder as she approached, until she was peering around the corner of the greenhouse and the sight stopped her dead.

Nicole stood next to a huge flat stump that seemed to be serving as a chopping block. There was an axe in her hands, which were protected by a pair of leather gloves. A stack of logs sat piled to one side of her, looking like the chainsawed remains of a fallen tree. On the other side was a pile of split wood, ready for the fireplace.

She looked like she had been at it for awhile— her face was pink from exertion, and her coat and toque lay discarded to one side, leaving her in just a navy plaid flannel shirt. The sleeves were rolled partly up, revealing toned forearms, and several buttons were undone, revealing a red undershirt. Even though the icy wind made the tails of the shirt flap, she still looked sweaty and overheated.

As Waverly watched, she raised the axe and brought it down in a practiced arc, with a loud grunt of exertion that sent a ripple of electricity down Waverly’s body. The axe hit the log and buried itself halfway through it, not quite splitting it.

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” Nicole asked the wood, her voice a little breathless. After a moment, she raised the axe again, taking the log with it, and with another small cry, sent them both crashing into the chopping block. With a woody _crack_ , the log split in two.

It was… _quite_ a display. Waverly had never before quite appreciated the act of swinging an axe until right at this exact moment. There was something _extremely_ appealing about the strength of it, the flex of muscles, the grunt of exertion, the satisfying sound of impact.

Panting, her hot breath steaming in the icy air, Nicole stuck the axe into the stump to hold itself up, then peeled off the leather gloves and unbuttoned her flannel the rest of the way. She wiped sweat off her face and caught her breath, then retrieved the split logs. The smaller half got tossed in the pile, and the larger half went back onto the block to be split again.

Waverly leaned against the greenhouse, watching as Nicole pulled the gloves back on and pulled the axe free from the stump. She caught herself holding her breath as the axe was raised, watching the flex of Nicole’s forearms, and inadvertently echoing Nicole’s noise on the downswing, all the effort culminating in the weight of the axe dropping straight through the wood, splintering it in two.

“There,” Nicole said to herself, sounding satisfied. Moving the axe to one hand, she tossed the quartered logs into the firewood pile, then paused to roll her neck and shoulders.

 _And speaking of satisfied…_ This certainly wasn’t the first time Waverly had been attracted to a woman— part of the appeal of leaving Purgatory had been the possibility of exploring that interest without the judgement of her tiny rural hometown— but it was the first time it had been quite this _visceral_.

Waverly was watching her use the axe handle to stretch her arms behind her back when she felt a sharp tap on her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin. Chrissy stood behind her, apparently watching her watch Nicole like some kind of drooling stalker.

“Um… I found her,” Waverly mumbled, as Chrissy seemed to shake with repressed laughter.

“I noticed. I’d wondered what was taking you so long.”

Waverly could feel her face turning bright red from embarrassment, and scrambled for a less lascivious explanation.

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt…” she said weakly. Chrissy clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle her giggles. “Shut up…” Waverly covered her face with her cold hands.

“Oh my god, you _like_ her, don’t you?” Chrissy accused in a giggly whisper.

“I—”

“Waverly?”

Waverly and Chrissy both looked up quickly and saw Nicole looking at them curiously, the axe hanging limply from one hand.

Waverly attempted a smile and a tiny wave, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt.

“Howdy neighbor,” she tried to joke. “Um… just coming over to see if I can borrow a cup of firewood?”


	7. Tis the Damn Season

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! We are having some WEATHER this week, aren't we (shout-out to everyone in the middle US.)? Snow is less fun when there's a -20 wind chill and you physically can't be outside for more than like 5 minutes. Anyway, I do want to finish this fic off so I can return to my Fallout one and other smaller projects, so let's continue on into... the turn of the plot. I just need everyone to remember in this one to have faith in the tropes and faith in me and faith in Nicole, and know that you'll all REALLY enjoy the next chapter! With that said, I do hope you'll enjoy this one, too, just in a slightly different way. Have at it!

* * *

Nicole led them back to the house, leaving the axe on the stump and carrying her coat over one arm. Her face was still pink from the exercise, and her flannel hung open, letting the winter wind ruffle it and cool her off.

Waverly could relate. They might be in a Purgatory winter, but she was so flushed from embarrassment (and perhaps not a small amount of sheer wanton lust) that she might as well have been in an Arizona summer.

Inside Nicole’s house, it was warm and homey— much more so than the Homestead. There was a kitschy vintage pattern on the kitchen tiles and peeling wallpaper on the walls, but at least the walls seemed _solid_. Old-fashioned appliances and fixtures contrasted with more modern decorations— presumably Nicole’s own tastes slowly overtaking her great aunt’s.

“Do you guys want something to drink?” Nicole offered, already filling a cobalt-blue kettle and setting it on the stove. Her eyes met Waverly’s. “I don’t have almond milk, so coffee’s probably out, but I have about a million different teas.”

“Um… Sure, tea would be great,” Waverly said.

“Actually, could I use your bathroom?” Chrissy asked. Nicole nodded and pointed the way, and just like that, she and Waverly were alone in the room. Waverly sat at Nicole’s small, round kitchen table and watched her at the sink. Nicole scrubbed her hands clean and then tried to gather her hair in some semblance of order. The wind had tossed it into disarray, and she brushed it back from her face over and over again, while Waverly watched, almost hypnotized. It was hard to not wonder how it would feel to do the same thing, to bury her fingers in the long red hair, to brush it back and lean in…

“Thanks for letting us warm up here,” Waverly said, once the silence had gone on for too long. If anything, she felt a little _too_ warm. The image of Nicole swinging an axe was still fresh in her mind, complete with sound and technicolor.

Nicole flashed her a small smile.

“Anytime. Really. If you’ve been out on your family’s property all morning, you must be freezing.”

“Yeah, still no electricity,” Waverly sighed.

“They must be slowed down because of the holiday,” Nicole guessed charitably. “I’m sure they’ll get to it soon.” She picked two colorful mugs from where they sat stacked next to the stove.

Still a bit overheated in spite of her cold hands, Waverly took off her coat and draped it over the back of the chair while Nicole busied herself at the counter. As she was settling back into her chair, there was a sudden sensation of something live and furry rubbing against her ankle, and she jolted up, nearly knocking the chair over.

“Oh, sorry, that’s just Calamity Jane. You aren’t allergic or anything, are you? I can put her upstairs.”

An _enormous_ orange cat stared up at her from under the table and meowed once. Waverly gave a small, surprised laugh.

“Calamity Jane?” she asked, then knelt down and held out a hand for the cat to inspect. It sniffed at her curiously, then rubbed its face against her fingers.

“Yeah. Don’t worry, she likes people. Well… she likes women, anyway.” Nicole flashed a joking smile. “But who can blame her?”

Nicole’s attention returned to her task, oblivious to the frisson she had just caused. _She likes women. But who can blame her?_ That was practically a confession, wasn’t it? It was proof that Waverly hadn’t been wrong to think that Nicole had been flirting with her before.

Her rush of victorious thoughts was interrupted by Nicole approaching and offering a basket filled with a rainbow of different teas. She picked one almost at random, distracted by Nicole’s sudden proximity. Now that they were inside, she could even smell Nicole’s scent— like pine needles and fresh snow and sweat, and underneath it all, something warm and sweet, almost like vanilla.

While Nicole returned to the kettle, which sounded close to boiling, Waverly let her gaze roam around the room. The house was clearly old, but it was clean and obviously well-cared-for. If she leaned over, she could see into some kind of living room, with clean wooden floors and a blue couch. And across the room sat a pile of sealed cardboard boxes labeled “Christmas decorations” in black marker.

“You didn’t put up Christmas decorations this year?” Waverly asked curiously.

“Hm?” Nicole was filling the mugs. “Oh, those were my aunt’s. I already put up mine, but then later I found those in the greenhouse. I looked at them, and they’re nice, but they aren’t really my style.”

They were interrupted by Chrissy re-entering the room and Nicole repeating her offer of tea.

“Oh, yeah, anything warm would be perfect,” Chrissy agreed quickly. “That old house is really drafty.”

Nicole finished her prep and passed mugs to each of them, still steaming from the kettle. As she leaned close, setting containers of sugar and honey onto the table, the vanilla scent got stronger.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here and warm up, and then we can see about getting the firewood taken care of.”

After a few minutes, once the tea was prepared, they all moved to the living room, where Waverly and Chrissy took seats on the couch and Calamity Jane took up residence in Waverly’s lap. Nicole paced the room, constantly adjusting a string of garland here or an imperceptibly crooked picture frame there.

Waverly’s eyes followed her around the room, drawn by the movement. As much as she had missed Chrissy and as happy as she was to have her around again, she resented her presence here just the tiniest bit. She found herself craving more one-on-one time with Nicole.

Chrissy and Nicole struck up a conversation about the new police uniforms Sheriff Nedley was considering (Nicole was apparently stridently anti-khaki), and Waverly let herself mostly just sit back and listen, stroking Calamity Jane’s head and drinking her peppermint tea.

Eventually, they were warm and the mugs were empty and it was hard to justify staying any longer. Thus, they pried an extremely miffed Calamity Jane out of Waverly’s lap and trekked back outside. Waverly drove the truck up to the greenhouse, and they filled up the bed with split logs. As it turned out, Nicole had _not_ exaggerated about the amount of firewood she had.

“Were you planning on building a log cabin or something?” Chrissy asked after several minutes, panting as she handed another armful up to be stacked in the truck’s bed. “Why so much?”

Nicole paused her task of overloading a log carrier and braced her gloved hands on her knees for a moment, catching her breath.

“There were a lot of fallen trees on and around the property when I first moved in. Seemed like a waste to just have them all hauled away when I could use the wood.” She gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. “But I didn’t realize how much it was until I started trying to break it all up. I’d never chopped wood, really, before moving out here. I always lived in apartments and cities before. So I didn’t really know what I was doing at first.”

“Well, it looks like you definitely had enough to practice on. I think you got it figured out,” Waverly commented, looking at the mountain of firewood stacked just inside the greenhouse, protected from the elements. Nicole grinned up at her, dimples appearing on her cheeks.

“You have no idea.”

* * *

Once the truck was loaded, they all sat in a heap on the floor of the greenhouse, where it was surprisingly warm with the sun streaming through the glass. Nicole also hadn’t been exaggerating about the amount of random _stuff_ in the greenhouse. It was crowded with what looked like all kinds of old furniture and eclectic decorations, as well as an array of gardening supplies and— of course— piles upon piles of firewood.

“If you need an extra pair of hands to help with the cleaning and stuff, I can follow you out there,” Nicole offered, from where she was perched on an old trunk.

“Sure,” Waverly said, maybe a bit too quickly. “I mean, the more the merrier, right?”

She didn’t look, but she could _sense_ Chrissy silently laughing at her from a few feet away.

“Great. Just give me a few minutes to finish up here, and then I’ll meet you there. Okay?” Nicole’s smile was still bright as she hopped down from her perch, and Waverly caught herself unconsciously mirroring it, before Chrissy grabbed her sleeve and began pulling her towards the truck.

As Nicole headed back up towards the house, Waverly and Chrissy climbed back into Curtis’s battered blue truck. For a moment, they both just sat there, Waverly not yet turning the ignition and releasing the blare of the radio into the world.

“Sooooooo…” Chrissy said, expectantly, after a long moment. “You want to talk about it, or…”

Waverly turned the ignition, and the radio erupted in “Feliz Navidad,” drowning out everything else.

* * *

The radio granted her a very temporary reprieve, which was broken about three minutes later when they reached the Homestead again. Chrissy showed her just enough mercy to hold off questions until they began unloading the firewood, and then apparently her curiosity was too strong to contain.

“So… _really_ … what’s up between you and Deputy Haught?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh come on, Wave. I saw the way you were looking at her. I heard the way you were talking about her. I saw the way _she_ was looking at _you_.”

“What do you mean, how she was looking at me?” Waverly said immediately, her brain latching onto the idea of _someone else_ noticing Nicole’s interest. Chrissy pointed at her face.

“See! That, right there. That’s not ‘nothing.’”

Waverly tried to school her face into a more neutral, aloof expression. By the look in Chrissy’s eyes, she didn’t succeed. With a stifled groan, Waverly capitulated.

“Fine. It’s… _not_ nothing. But it’s not ‘something’ either, not really. I mean, I don’t even _live_ here anymore, it’s not like anything could happen.”

“But you said you thought you might move back someday. And if you do, she’ll probably still be here, right?”

Waverly hesitated. Against her will, the fantasy played out in her head: She was curled on the porch swing with a book on a summer day, with Wynonna perched nearby on the railing, staring out towards the mountains. But this time, a patrol car pulled up to the Homestead, and Nicole climbed out, calling a greeting to them both, a steaming coffee in her hand, a dimpled smile on her face.

The sense of longing in her chest grew worse.

“Maybe,” Waverly said. “Or maybe she’ll decide to go somewhere else. Or maybe she’ll end up married to someone in town by then,” she argued without much heart. She tried to blink the dreamy image away, tried to not imagine Nicole joining her on the porch swing, greeting her with a smile, leaning down for a kiss.

“Like who?” Chrissy laughed. “I don’t think Champ Hardy is exactly her type.”

Waverly suppressed a shudder at the thought.

“No, but who knows how long it’ll be before I move back— _if_ I ever move back. I’m sure she could have anyone she wanted.” After all, someone as gorgeous as Nicole, someone as sweet, someone as kind— in Purgatory’s shallow dating pool, she would have her pick of eligible dates.

“But what if she wants _you_?”

“Chrissy—” Waverly started, exasperated, but found that she didn’t really have a counterargument. She deflated slightly, leaning against the truck for support. “I don’t know. I mean… yes, okay, I _like_ her. But… I’m leaving in a few days. Isn’t it better for both of us if I just… don’t?”

It sounded weak, even to her own ears.

They both looked up abruptly at the sound of tires crunching on snow, as Nicole’s patrol car pulled through the gate. It smoothly rolled up next to the pickup, and Waverly tried not to picture her porch fantasy again.

“Don’t—” she started to preemptively warn Chrissy.

“I won’t,” Chrissy said immediately, as though it weren’t even a question.

Nicole hopped out and jogged over to join them-- frankly, with more energy than should have been possible after a day of chopping and carrying wood. Waverly offered a small wave, and both she and Chrissy pretended that they hadn’t just been talking about her romantic prospects.

“Hey!” Nicole greeted. “So, what still needs to be done?”

* * *

With Nicole’s help, they made short work of getting the wood unloaded and piled against the wall next to the stove— enough for a good long time, Waverly hoped. Or at the very least enough to see her through the end of her stay in Purgatory.

They set themselves back to the task of cleaning. Nicole was a good addition to the team, both for her height and strength and for her upbeat mood. She was methodical at cleaning and organizing, and Waverly found herself leaning in doorways, listening to her and Chrissy chat about recent town events and the various weird occurrences people had reported to the police station’s new anonymous tip line.

“Did your dad tell you about Mrs. Tatenhill?” Nicole asked as they emptied and cleaned the kitchen cabinets. Chrissy dissolved in giggles, nodding but unable to speak through her laughter.

“What about her?” Waverly asked curiously, from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting another box of knick-knacks.

“Oh, well apparently, she’s a cannibal. Probably serving human meat in her bolognese sauce,” Nicole spoke mock-confidentially. “So it’s probably a good time to be vegan. You dodged a bullet there.”

Waverly chuckled at the thought. Nicole stood from where she had been crouched, cleaning under the sink and checking the pipes. She took a minute to stretch, walking a few paces in Waverly’s direction while Waverly pretended to still be focused on the contents of the box in front of her.

But then Nicole paused in the doorframe as though she saw something there. She tilted her head down a little, looking more closely, and Waverly realized what she was looking at.

The height chart.

Nicole smiled, tracing one finger down, probably finding Willa’s marks, then Wynonna’s, down through their childhood years. As she reached the lowest markings, the smile faded from her face. As though she could see what was missing— _who_ was missing.

“Why aren’t there—” Nicole started, her eyebrows furrowed, but Waverly interrupted.

“Hey, speaking of the diner, we should probably break for lunch pretty soon, right?” She raised her voice a little louder than necessary, and Nicole seemed to pick up on her intent and never finished the question, although she still looked troubled by it.

“Sure, I could eat,” Chrissy said, having missed the short exchange.

“Okay…” Nicole agreed, still absentmindedly running her hand up and down the door frame.

There was a brief discussion of carpooling options. Chrissy claimed that her car was a tight fit for three people, especially if any of them had Nicole’s long legs. Chrissy and Nicole both vetoed the truck because of the radio, which left Chrissy driving alone and Waverly riding along with Nicole— a fact that Waverly began to suspect had been Chrissy’s plan from the start.

In Nicole’s patrol car, with Chrissy following behind, it felt almost _too_ quiet between them. Nicole had turned on the radio, and Christmas music was playing softly. After driving the truck around for days, it almost felt sacrilegious to hear them at anything less than a hundred decibels, but it didn’t feel like her place to turn it up.

“You said you grew up in that house, right? With your sister?” Nicole asked after a minute or two of silence.

“Yep,” Waverly agreed. Then, because she could see where Nicole’s mind was going, she sighed and answered the yet-unspoken question. “You’re right, though, I wasn’t on the height chart. Just my older sisters, Wynonna and Willa.”

“Were you too small?” Nicole asked. Waverly shook her head. She kept looking out the window, at the rolling fields of snow.

“That’s what I used to tell myself. Or maybe that they just rubbed off or something… But no. I just… wasn’t usually included in that kind of thing.”

“Oh…” She could tell from Nicole’s voice that she wanted to ask why, but was biting the words back— out of politeness maybe, or else just kindness. But Waverly didn’t like the idea of her making her own assumptions about the reason.

“My dad never really liked me,” she admitted quietly. “Willa didn’t either. I never really figured out why. They just never did, from the day I was born till the day they died.”

Nicole nodded slowly, her eyes still watching the road.

“And your other sister? Wynonna?” Nicole asked after a minute.

Waverly closed her eyes for just a moment, savoring the way her memories of Wynonna and her mother softened those of Willa and her father.

“Wynonna’s the best. And she’s always loved me. And liked me. Even back then. Even now.” Waverly could feel her eyes starting to water, and she silently begged them not to spill over.

“It must be hard for her to be so far away,” Nicole said gently.

“Yeah,” Waverly said, her voice rough with emotion. She saw Nicole’s head tilt a little, her eyes flitting over to catch a glimpse of her face. It must have been more transparent than she’d hoped, because Nicole immediately reached out, running her hand down her arm before gripping her hand reassuringly.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to stir up bad memories,” she said. Waverly shook her head.

“No, it’s okay. The house stirred them up, not you.” She sighed, and didn’t move her hand out from under Nicole’s. It was warm there, and the touch was comforting. “It wasn’t a great place to grow up, really. But it was ours. Our family has always lived there, since it was built. I guess just… somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have always thought that Wynonna and I would move back there one day. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud…”

“No, it doesn’t,” Nicole said, her voice soft and serious. Her hand tightened over Waverly’s, squeezing tenderly. Waverly put her other hand over Nicole’s, holding it in place.

Waverly leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes, listening to the soft, ethereal _Carol of the Bells_ playing over the radio. Something in the car smelled like vanilla— no, like vanilla-dipped donuts. Waverly remembered the scent from Nicole’s house, and realized that it might just be Nicole herself. It seemed oddly fitting for her to smell like something so sweet.

She let herself relax into a sort of meditation, and Nicole continued the drive in near-silence, humming along softly with the radio as they drove towards town.

* * *

The diner did not, as far as they could tell, serve human meat, nor did it carry very many vegan options, but Waverly’s bowl of tomato soup was good enough, and halfway through the meal, Nicole had disappeared (allegedly to the restroom) and returned with a cup of coffee (with almond milk and extra sugar) for Waverly, which had made them both laugh uncontrollably (much to Chrissy’s bemusement).

When they returned to the Homestead, dark memories still weighing on her, Waverly couldn’t help but look at it all with fresh eyes. She didn’t like what she saw. There was still so much to do. The power still wasn’t on. Almost nothing had been fixed. It still looked like a long-abandoned building, not a home.

They set back to work cleaning, and Nicole started noting places where the walls and ceilings needed patching. It was still a hundred times better than doing it alone, but Waverly couldn’t help but think of how much there was still left to do. Nicole's list of essential repairs just kept growing longer and more intimidating— windows that needed replacing, water damage (with the potential for toxic mold), some unsafe wiring visible around the circuit breaker, the entire porch that needed reinforcing.

She was supposed to leave again in a matter of days, and that just wasn’t enough time to do it all, even if she knew how— which she didn't. They needed professional help— plumbers, electricians, carpenters— not just three amateurs. The size of the job was just too much.

If no one was willing to come out to help them, maybe it really _was_ hopeless. The height chart had just reminded her yet again of what life at the Homestead had been like when she was a kid— namely, _sad_ and _lonely_ and _terrible_. For all the scant memories of playing under poplar trees or sledding down hills, there were ten more of falling into frozen lakes or trembling atop a rafter beam while Willa hissed threats from below. And here she was trying to _save_ the place?

She tried to rally herself. Tried to remind herself why she was doing it. She had committed to saving it. She was saving it for herself and for Wynonna. Someday they would be there together again, swinging on the porch swing or sitting around the fire pit. Watching scary movies on the couch, or drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

It just… wasn’t that easy to picture with the house in this state.

“Hey, Waves! Found another box of stuff!” Chrissy called, summoning Waverly from where she was sweeping piles of dust and dead bugs out the front door. She dropped the broom and followed her voice until she spotted her hauling out a sagging cardboard box from where it had been hiding under an end table.

“I’ve got it,” she said, already tired at the thought of going through it. She knelt down and took the box into her possession. She expected it to be more junk— almost every box they’d found so far was full of junk. It was clear that when they had moved out, someone— probably Gus and Curtis— had emptied the house of anything actually useful.

She flipped open the box. In it were some old toys— a mix of hers and her sisters. Including a little teddy bear she remembered naming Mr. Plumpkins, who Willa had often stolen from her to use as leverage. She had assumed he had been long lost after they moved out. She remembered crying over him more than she'd cried over Willa and Daddy, and Wynonna reassuring her that he was fine, probably off having his own adventures. She pulled him out to hug him, and her hand touched something papery white underneath…

“Oh my god,” she breathed, a sad laugh in her voice.

“What is it?” Chrissy asked, peeking over her shoulder. “Are those… tampons?”

“We needed an angel for the top of the tree. I was a kid, I didn’t know what they were for.” She pulled out the angel— which Wynonna still jokingly referred to as the _menstru-angel_ — and held it in both hands. It had been cobbled together lovingly but misguidedly out of pads and tampons, much to everyone's eternal amusement. “I can’t believe it’s still here.” When they were younger and still talked about such things, Wynonna had promised once that someday they would both get a Christmas tree every year and put her angel at the top, like a family tradition. Waverly tried to picture it now, a big Christmas tree in the Homestead, lights and garland everywhere, and the menstru-angel watching over them as they drank hot cider…

Only she couldn’t picture it this time. Here, sitting in the Homestead, water-stained and freezing cold, dark and empty, she just… couldn’t. All she could picture were the bleak Christmases of her childhood, when her father had been too drunk and distracted to bother hanging decorations and her presents were all her sisters’ hand-me-downs, if their father bothered to give her anything at all.

It was even bleaker now than it had been then. Even back then, the Homestead had been kind of a wreck. Fifteen years of abandonment later, it didn’t look like a place that anyone should live. The city inspectors had been right.

They’d been working at it for days, almost nonstop— cleaning, fixing, _trying_ to make it into a home again. But it wasn’t one. It was just a cold, empty, crumbling building. And Wynonna wasn’t there. And Wynonna wasn’t going to come flying back. Probably ever.

After all, why would she?

Waverly hadn’t been enough to stay for the first time. Why would it be any different now?

Waverly stood abruptly, dropping the angel back into the box. She needed to be out of that house. She needed to be gone. The ghosts were too close, the memories too fresh. She needed to get away from them.

“I can’t do this,” she said, feeling sick. “I… I have to get out of here… I’m sorry…”

She beelined to the door.

“Wave?” Chrissy called at her back.

“Waverly?” Nicole’s voice followed, sounding confused. “What—”

But Waverly was already out the door.

* * *

Waverly leapt up into her uncle’s truck and turned the key. The radio tried to blare another Christmas song at her, but she punched the volume knob and it fell eerily silent. In its place was just a low, grinding sound from the engine that set her teeth on edge. But anything was better than festive music right then. She had never in her life had _less_ Christmas spirit than right at that moment.

She threw the truck into reverse and swerved around, heading back for the road.

She wasn’t sure where she was going until she was halfway there.

The old poplar tree was still there, just shy of the edge of town, huge and bare in the winter. Her boots crunched in the ice-crusted snow as she walked up to it slowly. Then, she turned and leaned her back against it, sliding down until she was sitting against the trunk.

She hadn’t been out there in years, but she could still remember running around with her sisters, the three of them chasing each other in games of tag and tying flowers into crowns while their mother watched.

She wasn’t sure anymore if they were good memories or bad ones.

She had only been there for a matter of seconds when another car rolled up behind hers, and a frazzled-looking Chrissy Nedley climbed out of it.

“You followed me?” Waverly asked, her voice dull.

“Well yeah, my best friend ran off in tears. Of course I followed you.” Chrissy stepped awkwardly through the deep snow, probably ruining her boots, and took a seat right next to her under the tree. “Why here?”

“Mama used to take us here sometimes. Me and Wynonna and Willa. After Daddy passed out, when we could all get away.” She shook her head. “And _that’s_ supposed to be one of my _good_ memories from that house.” Her voice was bitter and shaky. “I just… I don’t think I can do this. I can’t fix the house myself, and maybe everyone’s right— maybe it doesn’t _deserve_ to be fixed, you know?”

“I know,” Chrissy said softly. “You don’t _have_ to if you don’t want to.”

“I _wanted_ to, I just…” She closed her eyes, and leaned back against the tree. “I wish Wynonna was here.”

“I know,” Chrissy said again. She wrapped an arm around Waverly’s shoulders, and neither of them spoke again for several minutes. “Hey… Waves, tomorrow’s Christmas. Why don’t you just… take the day off. Just… try not to think about it for a day or two, you know? Just let yourself enjoy the holiday.”

“I’m not going to be here for much longer.”

“I know. And that’s all the more reason to not spend all your time here torturing yourself. Just take some time to stop worrying about it, okay? Come watch a movie with me, or go get coffee with Nicole, or do something with your aunt and uncle. Just… take your mind off of it for a little while, okay? I know this has got to be dredging up a lot of family stuff for you.”

Waverly sighed and rubbed at her eyes, which kept welling up.

“Maybe you’re right…” she said after a minute. “It’s just been a lot to deal with…”

“I know.” Chrissy squeezed her shoulders in a sideways hug. “Just give yourself a break, okay?”

“Yeah, okay…”

“Do you want to sit here for a little bit?”

“Kinda… But it’s _really_ cold out here.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything, but I’ve only been sitting here for a few minutes and my butt’s already numb.”

Waverly managed a weak giggle.

“Yeah, mine too. Let’s go.”

“Do you want to come back to my place?”

“No. Thanks, but… I think I’m going to go back to my aunt and uncle’s.”

“Okay.” Chrissy stood, using the tree to pull herself up, and then held down a hand for Waverly. “Just call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Chrissy.” She let herself be pulled upright. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”

“It’s been really good to see you again. I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, me too. Tell your dad hi for me, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll just… call Nicole now and tell her she can go home. But I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay. Merry Christmas.”

After one final, bracing hug, they both retreated to their respective cars before they could both freeze to death. Waverly shivered as she sat in the driver’s seat, but didn’t start the engine just yet.

She picked up her phone and pulled the slip of paper out of her coat pocket. She’d been carrying it around for days, not totally sure what to do with it. But now, she dialed the number on the back.

“Hello?” Nicole’s voice answered, worry audible in her voice.

“Hey, it’s me,” Waverly said.

“Waverly. Are you okay?” Nicole asked immediately. “Where are you?”

“I just needed some air,” Waverly sighed. “I’m just having a… crisis of faith, that’s all.”

“A crisis of faith?” Nicole echoed curiously.

“Just… maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I should just let them tear the house down. Maybe it can’t ever be what I want it to be.”

“You want it to be a home for you and your sister, right? For Wynonna?”

The reminder was like an arrow to the chest, but she breathed through it.

“Yeah, but… she says she doesn’t even care. She probably doesn’t every want to come back anyway. Everyone here hates her. It was a stupid idea.” She rubbed at her eyes, her voice shaking. “And the Homestead is still a death trap, not a home. It’s always going to be depressing and dangerous. I can’t even picture what it would look like anymore… I think maybe I should just give up…”

“Are you sure?” Nicole’s voice was so gentle, so sincere that it nearly broke Waverly’s heart.

“Yeah. I’m sure. Just… you can go home. I’m sorry I made you help me try to fix it. It was a stupid idea. I’m not a kid anymore, I should have known better…”

“Waverly…”

“No, it was really sweet of you to help, but I just… I don’t think I can do it anymore. Please, just go home. You’ve already done too much for me.”

Nicole was silent for several seconds.

“Okay. If that’s what you want,” Nicole said softly.

“What I want… isn’t possible,” Waverly said. Her heart ached, and she couldn’t say anything more about it. She just shook her head, wiping her face on her sleeve. “Goodnight, Nicole.”

She hung up before Nicole could say anything back.


	8. All I Want For Christmas Is You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it, everyone! (Cue: _We did it, Joe!_ ) We are past the sads and into the... well... I'd hate to spoil it before you get to read it. Let's just say that it was an absolute joy to write and I hope you all love it. I'm really happy with bits of this chapter, so if you like it, I'd love to hear what you think. In the meantime, I just really hope you all enjoy. Merry Christmas to all of us.

* * *

Waverly woke on Christmas morning feeling a little better the day before. Her frayed nerves had recovered a little while she slept, although she still felt that faint, cold hopelessness in the back of her mind. In spite of that lurking darkness, she was determined to enjoy a nice Christmas morning with her aunt and uncle.

Still clad in pajamas and socks, with a cream-colored fleece blanket wrapped around her like a cloak, she padded out of the room, following her nose to the smell of fresh coffee in the kitchen. Gus and Curtis were already up, both clad in robes and slippers.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Uncle Curtis greeted her as she entered, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” she echoed, a smile fighting its way onto her face. She hadn’t had a real Christmas, a family Christmas, since she moved to Arizona, and falling back into the routine of it felt _good_.

Even if it would have been nicer with her sister there, at least she got this much.

She helped herself to a cup of coffee from the coffee pot, gratefully adding a heavy splash of almond milk and a little more sugar than she usually would. The smell of it triggered a memory of coffee and conversation in Shorty’s with Nicole. The thought gave her a slight pang.

She leaned against the counter, holding the coffee mug in both hands while waiting for it to cool enough to drink.

“Everything alright?” Gus asked her, her sharp eyes reading Waverly’s face the way they always could. Waverly pulled her face into a halfhearted smile.

“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m just tired,” she fibbed. Gus didn’t look like she believed her, but she didn’t press the issue.

“You aren’t going back out to that old house today, are you?” Gus asked her. She shook her head.

“No, not today.” She pressed one hand to her temples. “I’m starting to think you guys were right. Maybe it would be better to just let it go.”

Uncle Curtis’s grizzled, lined face turned down in a slight frown, and he set his newspaper down.

“Are you sure? You sounded pretty sure the other day.”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s a sign, that I can’t even get anyone to go out there. It’s not like I have so many great memories of the place anyway. Maybe it’s time.”

Curtis and Gus seemed to exchange a concerned look.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Gus said, coming over and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “You know you can always stay with us when you come to town. That room is always yours.”

Waverly almost argued, _but not Wynonna can’t stay here, right? She doesn’t get a room?_ But it was Christmas, and she didn’t want to start a fight on Christmas. So she just nodded.

“Yeah, I know that, Gus.”

* * *

After coffee and breakfast, they all retreated to the living room, where Waverly got under a second blanket, curled in the armchair against the chilly morning.

Usually they would exchange presents at this point in the morning, but this year, all the money that would have gone to gifts had been swallowed into Waverly’s last-minute pre-holiday price-gouged international plane ticket, so instead they just sat around the tree, sometimes talking, sometimes not talking. Curtis built up a fire in the fireplace, while Gus affectionately needled him from the couch.

“You’re gonna burn down the whole house if you make it any bigger.”

“I just want to be sure it’s warm enough for Waverly over there. It’s no good bringing her back here just to freeze her to death in our own house.”

Eventually, Curtis dozed off on the couch and Gus disappeared to start baking cookies. With a glance at the time and a brief mental calculation, Waverly settled back in the armchair and picked up her phone. She eagerly placed the call. It only rang once before it was picked up and within a few seconds, Wynonna’s face appeared on the screen. She was wearing what looked like a hoodie trimmed with black fur, with pictures of coffee cups all over it. Waverly felt her face split into a huge grin at the sight.

“What are you wearing?” she giggled.

“Merry Christmas to you, too, baby girl,” Wynonna said, rolling her eyes in good-natured faux-annoyance.

“Merry Christmas,” she said back. She tilted the phone to show off the fireplace and the tree. “Look, just like when we were kids.”

“Yeah…” Wynonna answered, somewhat unenthusiastically. With a flash of guilt, Waverly realized that for every Christmas Wynonna spent with their aunt and uncle, there was another Christmas, another birthday, another holiday spent at psychiatric hospitals, juvenile detention centers, or foster homes. “What’s on top of the tree? I can’t see,” Wynonna said after a beat of awkward silence, apparently trying to rally a little more enthusiasm.

Waverly tilted the phone back so that the camera pointed higher.

“Just a star,” she said, eying the gold star stuck to the top of the tree. “Why?”

“No reason, I guess. I was just thinking… Do you remember that angel you made when you were a kid?”

“I more than remember it,” Waverly said, another mixed wave of nostalgia and hopelessness rolling over her. “You won’t believe this, but I _found_ it yesterday while I was cleaning out the Homestead.”

“No way. The menstru-angel? It’s still in one piece?” Wynonna looked surprisingly cheered by this information. A few days ago, that might have given Waverly a new surge of hope, but now everything felt muted.

“It might be the _only_ thing there that’s all in one piece.” She sighed tiredly, trying not to think too hard about the Homestead’s crumbling structure.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just… I’m starting to think that everyone’s right. There’s no way I can do it by myself. Even with Nicole helping, and Chrissy, it’s too much. We can’t do it ourselves.”

“Why do you even _want_ to save it that bad? Is it a Grandpa Wyatt History Tombstone thing?”

“Yeah, sure. A Grandpa Wyatt History Tombstone thing,” she repeated dully. But maybe it was just that the week had been so long, or that the previous day had left her drained, but she just didn’t have it in her to keep it inside anymore. “Actually, no. I just… God, I just want it to be _fixed_ so that… So that… Just… Don’t you ever think you’ll come back someday?” The words were jumbled and messy, but so were the feelings tangled in her chest. Wynonna’s eyebrows rose.

“Back to Purgatory? Why would I?” She sounded honestly confused. Waverly tried to stop herself from shaking from… nerves? Sadness? Rage?

“For me!” she half-shouted, pointing at herself.

“Waves, you don’t even live there anymore.”

“Yeah, but I _could_. I could move back. And if the Homestead was all fixed up, I could stay there, or you could stay there, or _we_ could both stay there. Like we talked about when we were kids. Don’t you ever just… _want_ that? To be in the same place for once?”

Saying it all out loud felt so dangerous, like she was tearing herself open and putting herself at the world’s mercy. It just made it worse when Wynonna didn’t answer right away.

“You mean, you’re fixing it for _me_?”

“Yeah, you dummy, of course I am! Why else would I go back to that depressing death trap?” Waverly buried her face in her hands. “I know, it’s stupid, and we were just kids, but I just… I always liked imagining that someday we’d both move back there and live in the same place for once in our lives. I miss you, and I miss feeling like I have a real family, with a real home. I’m sorry. I know we aren’t kids anymore.”

Wynonna went quiet again.

“It’s not stupid,” she said after a minute. The words reminded Waverly of Nicole touching her hand in the car, and she let the thought give her a moment’s comfort. “Why didn’t you ever talk about this before?”

Waverly wiped at her eyes, even though they felt hot and dry.

“Because we don’t ever talk about stuff like that.”

Wynonna nodded as if to say _good point_.

“Fair enough. Mama and Daddy weren’t exactly role models for emotionally healthy family conversations.”

“Not really,” Waverly agreed, sniffling a little. Wynonna looked slightly pained.

“Well, I guess now we’ve talked about it. Go Team Earp,” she joked. Waverly shook her head.

“So, do you think you’d ever move back? If the Homestead were fixed? And I moved back?”

“Uh… I don’t know,” Wynonna said, frowning a little. “I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. Coming back.”

“It might not be as bad this time,” Waverly said. “And you’d have a place that was just yours.”

“Unless they tear it down,” Wynonna noted, clearly finally catching on to Waverly’s desperation. She shook out her hair a little, as if reorienting herself. “So, how do we stop that? What do you need to keep it standing?”

Waverly felt a little rush of relief.

“Professional help. Contractors who know what they’re doing. And who aren’t afraid to even drive out here, like freaking Pete and Kyle and everyone else in town.”

“Wait, wait, wait, back up,” Wynonna interrupted, waving her hand a little. “Pete and Kyle? You mean Pete and Kyle _York_? _They’re_ the contractors you’ve been trying to get?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not exactly in a position to be picky, I’d take _anyone_ at this point. But I thought they’d be willing to. I mean, they always seemed nice back in school and when I worked at the bar. But apparently I was giving them too much credit.”

An unusually thoughtful look took over Wynonna’s face.

“Yeeeeeeeeah,” she said vaguely. “Huh. Pete and Kyle. That takes me back.”

“Why?” Waverly racked her brain, trying to remember what the York brothers had to do with Wynonna. She had always thought they liked her— or at least that they were attracted to her, which was as close as most Purgatorians got to liking her.

“Maybe nothing…” Wynonna said, a tad ominously. Waverly was about to inquire further when she was preemptively cut off by Gus re-entering the room with a plate of cookies.

“Finding a recipe for _vegan_ Christmas cookies was no small feat, so you’d better eat this whole dang plate,” Gus told her, then seemed to notice what— _who_ — was on her phone.

“Oh, thanks, Gus. I was just calling Wynonna. Here, why don’t you say hi.” She tilted the phone towards her aunt, and the whole room got just a little bit cooler, a little bit tenser.

“Wynonna,” Gus greeted. “Merry Christmas. How is Italy?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Wynonna said. “I’m in Greece.”

“Right, that’s what I meant. Must have gotten them mixed up.”

“Sure…” Wynonna sounded unconvinced. “Greece is fine. It doesn’t get as cold here as it does there.”

The tension just kept climbing, the elephants in the room all crowding them in, until Waverly finally stepped in.

“Why don’t I take this into the other room,” she said after a minute of clipped, awkward small talk. Taking pity on everyone involved, she carried the phone into her room instead.

“Sorry,” she told Wynonna once the door was safely closed behind her.

“It’s fine.” It didn’t _sound_ fine.

“I thought… it’s just been a long time since the two of you talked. But I guess that was kind of the point, huh?” She shook her head. “Sorry.”

Wynonna watched her from the other phone, eying her with the same concern Gus and Curtis had shown earlier.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem… different, from last time you called.”

She should have known that Wynonna would notice. She had always had a protective streak a mile wide where Waverly was concerned. Waverly shook her head, trying to rally her mood into something less depressing.

“It was just a rough day yesterday. I really thought that once the Homestead got cleaned up, it would look a lot better, but we’ve spent hours and hours on it, and it looks just as disgusting as when we started.”

“That’s how it always looked,” Wynonna pointed out.

“I know, I just… thought it would be better this time, and it wasn’t, and I kind of ran off. Nicole probably thinks I’m crazy.”

“Nicole? Nicole the Hot Cop?” Wynonna probed, a glint of interest in her eye.

“Yeah.” She didn’t bother arguing with her this time. She still remembered the heat she had felt watching Nicole swing her axe or grin at her over a mug of tea. So, fine. _Nicole the Hot Cop_ was fine. “It’s stupid, but she just seems so…” Waverly couldn’t quite grasp any single word that encompassed what she felt, so she just blew out a heavy sigh.

“Hot?” Wynonna guessed, a teasing smirk on her face. Again, Waverly didn’t bother arguing.

“Yeah, but… more. She’s so… cool. And nice. And thoughtful.” The suave flirting. The offers of help. The comforting touches. The endless coffee.

“And hot?”

“And _so_ hot,” Waverly moaned disconsolately. Wynonna snorted.

“You know, I thought something like that was going on. Your face did a thing when you talked about her.”

“Nothing’s ‘ _going on_ ,’” Waverly disagreed. “Nothing _can_. I’m _leaving_ in a few days.”

“So?”

“ _So_ there’s no point in starting anything.”

“Sure there’s a _point_. There’s always a point. Besides, you were the one who was just talking about moving back someday.” Wynonna rolled her eyes. “Unless… you think she’s not interested?”

Waverly thought back to all the hints Nicole had carefully dropped, both subtle and overt. The looks. The touches. The smiles. No one bought that much coffee for another person without good reason.

“No, I think she’s… probably interested.”

Wynonna threw her hands in a gesture like _oh come on_.

“So go for it!”

Waverly buried her face in her arms.

“But I live in _Arizona_ ,” she groaned. Wynonna gave a dismissive ‘psh,’ like that was completely irrelevant.

“Listen to me, baby girl. When you go _back_ to Arizona, which would you regret more— a whirlwind romance with someone you really like, or missing out because you were too afraid to ‘start something’ you didn’t think you could finish?”

Waverly peeked out from under her arm.

“The second one?” she guessed. Wynonna smirked at her.

“That’s what I thought. See, you always were the smart one in the family. Don’t ruin that reputation by being dumb now.”

They talked a little longer, until Wynonna seemed to run out of steam and bowed out, claiming that she had another important call to make. Waverly doubted that, but let her get away with it. With a final ‘Merry Christmas, I love you,’ they signed off, and Waverly sank back onto the bed, contemplating a nap.

The phone buzzed three times in her hand, and she looked down at it, expecting a text from Wynonna. It _was_ a text, but was from an unknown number. She blinked at the unfamiliar number for a moment, then realized it was the number from the back of Nicole’s card. The number she had called the previous day.

 _**—Merry Christmas!  
** _ _**—I hope you’re feeling better today. I’m sorry yesterday was so hard.  
** _ _**—You left your key and cleaning supplies at the house. I don’t think anyone would break in, but I locked up and put the key in the porch light. You might want to pick it up today if you can.** _

Waverly sighed at the thought of driving back out to the Homestead. She _had_ promised Chrissy she would try not to think about it for a few days. But she had already broken that promise by talking to Wynonna, and she actually felt a lot better for it.

Plus, she _had_ been enjoying her daily drive out there. And it _did_ make sense to pick up the supplies so they didn’t freeze in the cold house. And it wasn’t like she didn’t have the time on her hands. And once she picked everything up, she could go back to not thinking about it for at least the rest of the day.

With a sigh, she freed herself from the carefully arranged stack of blankets and began pulling on enough extra layers of clothing to survive the car ride.

When she emerged, clad in an oversized Christmas sweater and a red scarf that looked more festive than she felt, Gus raised her eyebrows at her.

“Goin’ somewhere?” she asked.

“Yeah, I left some stuff at the Homestead yesterday. I was just going to go grab it real quick. I’ll be back right after.” Gus and Curtis exchanged a glance, but Waverly reassured them, “I promise, I’m just going to grab them and come back. I’m not going to stay.” It would be too depressing to spend her Christmas Day scrubbing the cold, unappreciative Murder House.

They didn’t argue with her, although Uncle Curtis did once again offer his truck for the trip, and Waverly accepted. She promised them again that she would be back soon, and then with a bracing sigh, she went out into the cold winter’s day.

* * *

She didn’t enjoy the drive out to the Homestead like she had the previous days, but the sight of the snow and the forests and the mountains still had enough magic left in them to calm her somewhat, and by the time she reached the gate, the worst of her roiling emotions had softened.

As she pulled through the gate, something about the house looked off. She blinked a few times, confused, before she realized what it was.

The porch light was on.

The power was back.

And, odder still, there was a wreath hanging on the door.

Waverly shut off the squealing engine. She barely noticed the cold and the snow falling around her as she walked up to the door. She found the house key tucked up behind the glowing porch light, and she found a folded note with her name on it taped above the doorknob. With slightly trembling fingers, she unstuck the note and unfolded it.

**_Waverly—_ **

**_The power came back on yesterday, not long after you left.  
_ _I know you weren’t really in the holiday spirit just then.  
_ _You said you couldn’t picture this place looking like a real home again._ **

**_Open the door._ **

**_—Nicole_ **

She read the note four times.

“What did you do?” she murmured, slotting the key into the lock and pushing the door open.

On the other side of the door, where it had always been dank and depressing, it instead was warm and bright. The front room was clean and tidy, free of dust and ash and cobwebs. Furniture had been dragged from other rooms, cleaned to a shine, and positioned to look natural. Twinkle lights were strung along the ceiling, garland hung over the windows and door frames, and Christmas decorations stood, crowded on every available surface. Santas and sleighs and snowmen were _everywhere_. There was even a little Christmas tree standing near the stove, covered in tinsel and slightly old-fashioned ornaments… and with the menstru-angel seated delicately on top.

The little old radio from the closet was propped up on a stool by an outlet, softly playing “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” to the room.

It was… a house. Like, an _actual_ house, where people could _actually_ live. Like when she lived here with her sisters, and her parents. Only better, because now she didn’t have to be afraid of her drunken father or abusive sister. Now it was just hers. It was _real_.

The fantasy returned, more vivid than ever. The Homestead, full of her friends and family. Wynonna and Gus and Curtis and Chrissy, and yes, Nicole, too. Everyone she cared about, all in one place, _for once_. Everything where it was meant to be.

Home.

She sat heavily down at the table, which was blanketed in a reindeer-themed tablecloth and had a miniature tree as a centerpiece. A few decorative candles (unlit, but uncovered) wafted subtle scents into the air— balsam, and gingerbread, and vanilla.

_Vanilla._

Emotion coiled in her chest, sweet and aching and beautiful, until she thought she would burst.

Home. _Finally_.

When she thought her legs would work again, she tried to investigate the rest of the house— the kitchen, the bedrooms— but clearly sacrifices had been made. Nicole, handy and determined as she was, wasn’t _magic_. Furniture and decorations had been raided from other rooms to shore up the front room, and a familiar-looking empty box labeled “Christmas decorations” sat, mostly empty, in a corner. She recognized it from Nicole’s house.

_“Oh, those are my aunt’s. They’re nice, but they aren’t really my style.”_

How long must it have taken, for her to drag all the furniture into place? To hang the garland? To get all the lights untangled? To get the front room scrubbed clean and bright? To bring over all the decorations, all the candles, the little tree, the extra firewood? Had she been here all night, sprucing the place up after Waverly had abandoned it? After Waverly had given up?

Nicole, who had been helping her even though they barely knew each other. Nicole, who she now owed about five hundred coffee dates. Nicole, whose dimpled smile always seemed to make her smile herself.

She looked back down at the note in her hand, with her own name written across the front in a neat, precise hand. She remembered Wynonna’s words. She remembered Chrissy’s.

She stood abruptly.

She knew what she wanted.

 _Who_ she wanted.

And it was almost within reach.

* * *

She left the warm house and swung back up into the truck. This time, when the engine revved, she punched the radio dial and let it joyfully scream “All I Want For Christmas is You” as she floored the gas pedal for the half-mile to Nicole’s house.

Only her car wasn’t there.

Waverly jumped down, the car still running, and pounded on the front door, but there was no answer. She started to pull out her phone, planning to text “WHERE ARE YOU,” when she abruptly remembered.

_“Essential services. Someone’s got to be on call. I don’t really have any family around anymore, but Nedley has Chrissy, so I told him I’d take the Christmas shift.”_

She jogged back to the car and pointed it towards town.

* * *

She left the truck parked at an illegal angle in the Purgatory PD parking lot, bursting through the two sets of double doors until she was face-to-face with a mildly startled Nicole Haught, who had been slumped back in her chair at the desk, a paper coffee cup in one hand and a paperback book in the other. She hastily put the cup down and hid the book under a pile of paperwork on the desk before she seemed to register who it was.

“Wave—”

Waverly didn’t let her finish.

“Did you decorate my house?” she demanded. Nicole seemed a little thrown by her tone, and hesitated before answering— like she was afraid if she said the wrong thing, Waverly might explode.

“Yeah. I mean, Chrissy helped, too. She came back after you left and told me a little about what was going on. Nothing really personal, just… the gist of it.” Nicole looked a little sheepish. “And, uh… I had all those old decorations and nowhere to put them up, and you said you wished you could see it look like a real house, so I thought…” she continued, still watching Waverly’s face as though trying (and failing) to gauge her reaction. “And look, I know you don’t live here anymore, so maybe there’s no point, but…” Nicole chuckled, looking away briefly and brushing some invisible strand of hair away from her face. When she looked back, there was a glimmer of determination in her eye. “I can’t help it. I like you.”

And there it was. No more playful flirting. No more subtle glances. No more half-joking offers of coffee. Just… _I like you_.

Waverly felt a warm rush of emotions sweep through her. Relief. And joy. And wonder. And excitement. And sure, maybe some fear, too. Maybe a lot of fear. But mixed in with everything else, even the fear didn’t seem that scary.

Because in spite of everything bad and everything hard that had happened that week… Nicole _liked_ her. And that was worth something. Maybe it was even worth everything.

She must have taken too long to answer, because the confident, determined look on Nicole’s face began to shift into something a little more worried.

“Is that… okay?” Nicole asked, a nervous little wrinkle appearing between her eyes.

Waverly could have probably figured out a way _around_ the desk, but that would have involved taking her eyes off Nicole and moving away from her, even if just for a few seconds, and _that_ wasn’t about to happen. So instead, she put her new window-climbing skills to the test and vaulted up onto the counter and down the other side, nearly but not quite tumbling into Nicole’s lap.

“Woah—” Nicole said, half-standing in something like alarm. “What—”

Waverly didn’t let her finish that either.

Taking advantage of Nicole’s awkward half-standing height (which made it _so_ much easier than it would have been otherwise), she grabbed her by the lapels to hold her still long enough to step into her space and finally, _finally_ capture her lips with her own.

For just an instant, Nicole froze. Then, Waverly felt something like a relieved laugh against her lips, and one of Nicole’s warm hands touched down along the side of her wind-chilled face, as gentle as a sigh. And then Nicole was kissing her back, tempering her desperate energy with something a little slower and sweeter.

The moment stretched, a frozen few seconds that felt like entire glorious hours, before they both broke away, just enough for a breath of vanilla-scented air.

“Merry Christmas to me,” Nicole murmured, the words falling against Waverly’s own lips.

And maybe at that point, Waverly should have pulled away, should have talked about what she was thinking and feeling, but there were _so many_ other things she would rather be doing.

One of Nicole’s hands touched down just over the zipper of her coat, careful and unassuming, as though waiting for her permission. And the thought of Nicole’s hands, free to explore under her coat, was just too much to resist.

“Is there somewhere…?” she asked, a little more breathless than expected. Her heart was hammering like she was skydiving, or bungee jumping, or diving down into a deep ocean. Like she had just reached the edge of a cliff, but wasn’t afraid to jump. Like she knew that when the time came, she would grow wings and fly.

Nicole’s smile widened, and with only the briefest flicker of a glance to the door, she began walking them, step by step, back into the sheriff’s office. The sheriff who would be gone all day, celebrating Christmas with his daughter, leaving his office nice and vacant for hours and hours…

* * *

“I really hope no one comes in with an actual emergency,” Waverly murmured, sprawled back on the surprisingly comfortable couch in Nedley’s office. Her coat and scarf lay discarded on the ground, along with Nicole’s gun belt and the hair tie and bobby pins that had held her French braid together. They were still clothed, although Nicole’s shirt was mysteriously untucked, with a few extra buttons undone, which Waverly didn’t remember doing but also wasn’t complaining about.

“I really hope Nedley doesn’t suddenly think of something he needs from his desk,” Nicole said back, from her position on her side, stretched along the back of the couch. She was propped on one elbow, looking down at Waverly with a wide, almost incredulous smile. Her hair was loose and tumbled over her shoulders in messy waves (and, as Waverly had found out, it was _very_ nice to wind one’s hands into, and doing so caused Nicole to make some _very_ nice sounds).

“I could text Chrissy and ask her to make sure to keep him busy,” Waverly suggested halfheartedly. “But she’d never let me live it down.”

Nicole chuckled, one hand idly stroking up and down Waverly’s side. That touch alone was making it almost impossible to think of anything else.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. She’s the one who told me it was worth taking a chance on you,” Nicole told her.

“She did?”

“Mm-hm. After you left, I wasn’t sure if I should just lock up or if I should keep going. She came back and told me that this had been stirring up a lot for you, but that I shouldn’t give up.” Nicole chuckled, the sound rumbling against Waverly’s arm. “I guess she was right.”

“I guess now I owe _her_ a bunch of coffees, too.” Waverly murmured, and Nicole laughed in earnest. The sound of it was so free, so happy, that Waverly wished she could record it and play it back the next time she needed a boost.

“But you didn’t bring any today?”

“I was a little distracted,” Waverly said, playfully shoving an elbow into her stomach. The muscles tensed defensively, even as Nicole chuckled. _Oh, abs. Of course she has abs._

“You were definitely on a mission,” Nicole agreed, her tone warm and affectionate.

“Well, I’d say mission accomplished,” Waverly said, looking up into Nicole’s clearly joyful face. It was too much to resist, and Waverly leaned up to kiss those smiling lips.

“Yeah…” Nicole’s smile grew somehow softer as they separated again. “So now what?”

“I don’t know yet,” Waverly admitted with a sigh. She reached out and splayed her hand over the same spot she had just elbowed. It was warm, and rose and fell with Nicole’s breathing. She slid the hand up, up, up (even as Nicole’s breath hitched as it slid over the curve of her breasts) until it could cup her face. There were little shadows under her eyes— evidence of her overnight work on the Homestead. Waverly traced the circles with her thumb, then stroked it over her cheek, marveling at how soft it was, how smooth. How enticing a place to press her lips.

She had never felt this way about anyone before, and certainly never this fast. She had never felt so ready. So sure. It just felt… _right_.

It felt warm. And safe. And somehow comforting and exciting all at the same time.

It felt… like _home_.

* * *

Somehow, Nicole managed to display her superhuman strength yet again, this time not by swinging an axe, but by wrangling enough self control to reluctantly get off the couch and straighten her clothing. They _almost_ got distracted again when Waverly (out of sheer politeness, of course) offered to help her rebraid her hair, but despite a sorely tempted glint in her eye, Nicole opted to complete the task herself.

While she stood at the restroom’s mirror, fingers working with practiced precision, Waverly stood in the doorway, watching her. It was nice to watch. It was nice to be _allowed_ to watch. It was nice for her attention to be _welcomed_. Every few moments, their eyes met in the mirror, and Nicole’s smile quirked a little higher. That was nice, too.

“Do you have to get back to your aunt and uncle’s?” Nicole asked as she finished, threading a final few bobby pins into place.

“I don’t know. I should probably call them at least. I told them I was just driving out to get the key and coming right back. They’re probably wondering if I’ve been kidnapped or something.” She sighed. “If it weren’t Christmas, I would take you out for coffee, but everything is closed.”

“We’ve got coffee in the break room,” Nicole offered. “But I don’t really recommend it, and there’s no almond milk. It’s just to keep us awake.”

“How late do you have to stay here tonight?” Waverly asked.

“Lonnie’s supposed to come in at five and take the evening shift. Why?”

“And then what were you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Make dinner, I guess. Maybe chop some more wood if it’s still light at all.” She shot a teasing grin and a playful eyebrow waggle Waverly’s way, and Waverly had to try not to blush. “Why?”

“Just… I should go back to my aunt and uncle’s _now_ , but maybe _after_ …” she trailed off meaningfully. Nicole turned towards her and leaned sideways against the sink.

“You wanted to get some more work done on your Homestead?”

Nicole’s helpful side was too strong for its own good, and Waverly had to bite back a laugh at her expense. Instead she tried to salvage the moment, attempting a more smoldering look, a more seductive smile.

“Actually, I was thinking maybe you could show me _your_ place, and maybe give me a few… practical tips.”

“Practical tips?” Humor danced in Nicole’s brown eyes as the message seemed to sink in. “Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

“But if you _wanted_ to chop more wood, there’s no need to stop on my account.”

“No, of course not.”

“I’d hate to impose.”

“Obviously.” Nicole stepped closer, until they were both crowded in the doorway. She leaned in and pressed one more kiss to Waverly’s lips, tender yet thrilling. “Come over whenever you want. I’ll be waiting.” She pressed her lips a final time to Waverly’s cheek, then leaned a little farther, to whisper in her ear. “Merry Christmas, Waverly.”

Waverly breathed in the scent of vanilla dipped donuts and heavenly peace. It was a heady feeling.

“You know, I don’t think ‘merry’ even _begins_ to cover it.”


End file.
